Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist who has become a key figure in the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, praised South Carolina for dealing with the virus as it prepares to further relax its restrictions the next week.
“You have implemented things that I think would optimize your ability to reopen,” Fauci said on Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate health committee.
He characterized South Carolina’s response as something he “almost would like to clone”.
The laudatory comment came after U.S. Senator Tim Scott, RS.C., posed a question nearly three hours in a hearing before the Republican-led Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The panel was entitled “COVID-19: Returning to Work and School Safely”.
Scott’s question to Fauci began as a monologue in which Scott summed up efforts in Palmetto state to date to deal with the new coronavirus, where state health officials confirmed on Monday a total of 7,792 cases and 346 deaths.
“The capacity of our hospital is really better now than it was when the pandemic started,” said Scott.
Although the coronavirus pandemic has caused the number of patients in hospitals to decline, reports show that it has also pushed many health systems in South Carolina to the financial limit.
Scott said the state has not set a goal to prevent all deaths from the virus.
“That would be unreal. It is impossible,” said Scott.
Scott added that the state did not propose to implement quarantine guidelines designed to last until a vaccine was in place.
“It would take too long,” he said.
Scott highlighted the state’s recent efforts to obtain more contact trackers, who are individuals charged with determining the spread of the virus.
He emphasized that the state plans to test 100 percent of nursing homes and staff members who care for nursing homes by the end of this month.
“While I respect the need for caution, we are often presented with a false dichotomy between saving our economy or saving lives,” said Scott.
He then asked Fauci the question: “What else do you suggest we can do to protect our most vulnerable populations?”
Fauci did not object to the rosy picture that Scott described, although experts have warned South Carolina must dramatically intensify its efforts to detect new cases of COVID-19 and stop its spread.
“You gave a really eloquent description of what I think would be a model way of approaching this,” said Fauci.
Fauci said South Carolina appears ready to “make careful progress” in its reopening plans, but he still called for caution. The state needs to keep its most vulnerable populations in mind when it begins to relax its restrictions, he said, especially the elderly, individuals with underlying diseases and minority groups.
“Protect them until the end of the relaxation of their mitigation,” said Fauci.
The comments were in contrast to Fauci’s sharp warning at the beginning of the hearing, when he said that opening too early would cause “some suffering and death that could be avoided, but that could even put you back on track to try to get economy recovery.” . “
Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force tasked with shaping the response to COVID-19, testified via videoconference after being quarantined while a White House official tested positive for the virus.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Talk to Caitlin Byrd at 843-937-5590 and follow her on Twitter @MaryCaitlinByrd.