By Dan McCaleb | The Center Square
If Americans continue to aggressively abide by stay-at-home and social distancing guidelines, summer vacations could be back on the table, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert said Thursday.
Appearing on “CBS This Morning,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said a typical family summer vacation “can be in the cards” if strict mitigation efforts continue. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
If significant parts of the country do open up again in time for summer vacations, “we have to be prepared that when the infections start to rear their heads again,” the country has to be prepared to aggressively “identify, isolate, contract trace and make sure we don’t have those spikes we have now.”
As of Thursday morning, there were at least 432,579 cases of coronavirus in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University, and 14,830 deaths. Most states have instituted stay-home orders except for food shopping, caring for a loved one, visiting the doctor or to go to essential places of work.
The closing of nonessential businesses has led to millions of new unemployment filings the past three weeks.
“A key CoronaVirus Model is now predicting far fewer deaths than the number shown in earlier models,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “That’s because the American people are doing a great job. Social Distancing etc. Keep going!”
This story first appeared on The Center Square.