Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States government’s leading infectious disease expert, suggested that Americans could wear masks for “at least” 100 days after Joe Biden’s inauguration as president.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made the comments in response to a question about what the Biden government could do in its early days to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
Fauci told NPR on Thursday that the new administration is likely to “make a lot of effort” to accelerate the launch of the vaccine program.
“We want to reach one million vaccinations a day, as the president-elect mentioned,” said Fauci. “The idea of having everyone for at least 100 days – at least – wearing a mask. Everyone uniformly, so we don’t have disparities where some people are adhering to public health measures and others are not.”
In December, President-elect Joe Biden said he planned to issue a permanent order requiring Americans to wear masks on federal buildings and on interstate transportation during the first 100 days of his government.
“On the first day of inauguration, I will ask the public for 100 days to mask. Only 100 days to mask – not forever, just 100 days. And I think we will see a significant reduction [of new cases]”Biden told CNN.
Fauci also told NPR that we can also see greater interaction and “cooperation” between the federal government and states in the early stages of Biden’s presidency, rather than allowing them to “do their own thing” in some ways.
His comments were made at a time when the United States reported more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday – a new daily record for the pandemic. The country has already recorded a total of more than 365,000 deaths from COVID and more than 21.7 million confirmed infections.
In his NPR, Fauci said he thought “unfortunately” this trend is likely to continue in the coming weeks, with an increase in new cases likely, in part, due to increased social interaction during the Christmas and New Year period.
“As we enter the next few weeks in January, this will likely be a reflection of the travels in the holiday season and the congregation environments that generally take place socially during that time period,” said Fauci. “Therefore, we believe that things will get worse as we enter January.”
“Hopefully, if we really accelerate our public health measures during that time, we will be able to reduce that acceleration,” he said. “But it will really require people to focus very, very intensely on doing the types of public health measures that we talk about all the time. Now is not the time to give up ”.
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