Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters on Monday that the world could experience another outbreak of coronavirus in the fall, even if the virus fades in the summer.
He added, however, that we would be more prepared.
The following exchange took place in the Rose Garden (via White House transcript):
Q: Mr. President, Dr. Fauci has warned that this could be a seasonal, cyclical virus. So — and maybe both of you could comment on this, and Dr. Birx as well. Are you prepared for this to strike again, say, in the fall? All of the efforts that are taking place right now to contain this, to be proactive, and you —
President Donald Trump: Yeah. We’re prepared. I hope it doesn’t happen. Doctor, would you like to say something about that? I hope it doesn’t happen, but we’re certainly prepared.
Dr. Fauci: In fact, I would anticipate that that would actually happen because of the degree of transmissibility. However, if you come back in the fall, it will be a totally different ballgame of what happened when we first got hit with it in the beginning of this year. There’ll be several things that’ll be different. Our ability to go out and be able to test, identify, isolate, and contact trace will be orders of magnitude better than what it was just a couple of months ago.
In addition, we have a number of clinical trials that are looking at a variety of therapeutic interventions. We hope one or more of them will be available.
And importantly, as I mentioned to you many times at these briefings, is that we have a vaccine that’s on track and multiple other candidates.
So I would anticipate that, you know, a year to a year and a half, we’d be able to do it under an emergency use. If we start seeing an efficacy signal, we may be able to even use a vaccine at the next season. So things are going to be very, very different.
What we’re going through now is going to be more than just lessons learned; it’s going to be things that we have available to us that we did not have before.
The U.S. surpassed 160,000 cases and 3,000 deaths as of Monday evening.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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