Americans must prepare for a second wave of COVID-19 to spread across the United States, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director said on March 26, warning the deadly virus could become seasonal.
“This virus is probably not going to go away once it stops its aggressive transmission in the United States, which I anticipate it will,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told KTAR News on Thursday. “We’ll have to get prepared for when this virus may come back.”
Redfield explained that respiratory viruses, like the CCP virus, have a tendency to be seasonal.
The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China before it was transmitted worldwide.
“We don’t know for certain that this virus is going to follow the pattern of flu, but I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis to be prepared for, that this may in fact die out,” Redfield added. “Not to say that the war is over, but basically recognizing that we need to get even more prepared for the next wave.”
A tracking map published by Johns Hopkins University, which relies on official government data, shows that the United States has 143,055 confirmed CCP virus cases and 2,513 deaths.
Redfield last month told CNN he believes the CCP virus will be “with us beyond this season” and “beyond this year.”
“I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission,” he said at the time.
His comments came as the U.S. government’s foremost infectious disease expert warned that the United States could experience more than 100,000 deaths and millions of infections as a result of the CCP virus pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on March 29, said that he “would say between 100,000 and 200,000″ Americans will succumb to the virus.
“We’re going to have millions of cases,” he said, adding, “I don’t want to be held to that,” as the pandemic is “such a moving target.”
Experts have said that most of the people who suffer from COVID-19 have mild or moderate symptoms that don’t require hospitalizations or intensive care. The fatality rate is higher among elderly people and individuals with underlying health problems.
The pandemic has upended everyday life around the world, causing closures of businesses and schools as federal and state officials seek to enforce measures to curb the spread of the disease.
The White House on Sunday extended its guidelines for stopping the spread of the CCP virus to April 30.
Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times