Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday warned against attempting to reopen shuttered businesses by May.
“I’ll guarantee you, once you start pulling back there will be infections. It’s how you deal with the infections that’s going count,” Fauci told the Associated Press. Fauci said the U.S. does not yet have the capability to rapidly test and trace for new outbreaks of the coronavirus.
President Trump has suggested reopening some parts of the U.S. economy by May 1, however Fauci said that target date was “a bit overly optimistic.”
“We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet,” Fauci cautioned. The U.S. should be able to get “people out of circulation if they get infected, because once you start getting clusters, then you’re really in trouble.”
Fauci is currently working with staff at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to develop antibody tests for coronavirus, which will allow doctors to determine whether certain patients have immunity after contracting the illness. Those tests must be as accurate as possible to allow recovered and immune patients to return to their jobs.
President Trump has pushed to reopen the U.S. economy as soon as possible, following mass closures of nonessential businesses and skyrocketing unemployment levels. While initially saying state governors should make the decision whether to reopen businesses within their respective states, Trump on Monday asserted that he had the authority to reopen states’ economies.
The claim set off bipartisan pushback, with Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) declaring on Tuesday that “the Constitution and common sense dictates these decisions be made at the state level.” Fauci in his comments to the AP said local economies should be opened on a “rolling” basis, due to the disparate impact of coronavirus on different parts of the country.