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US COVID-19 taskforce head calls for increased testing
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IANS | 30 Jun, 2020
Deborah Birx, head of the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, has called
on local authorities to expand testing as the us continues to grapple
with the largest outbreak in the world.
In a call with the
country's governors on Monday, Birx identified the states of Texas and
Arizona as "signficant hotspots", and said the task force wanted to help
"deploy some new testing techniques to really test large populations at
the community level", the BBC reported citing CBS News.
"Although
our mortality continues to decline week over week, we believe this week
it will stabilize, with the potential of going back up if we don't
intervene comprehensively now," she added.
As of Tuesday morning,
the US accounted for 2,588,582 COVID-19 cases, with 126,133 deaths,
according to the Johns Hopkins University.
Both tallies are currently the highest in the world.
On June 26, the US reported the highest number of new cases in a single day, with at least 40,173 new infections.
Thirty-six states were reporting a rise in COVID-19 cases.
During
Monday's call Anthony Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert,
said young people needed to understand they had a role to play in
helping to contain the spread.
"We don't want to go back to shutdown," he added.
"We want to let the public health process be the vehicle to opening up, not the obstacle to opening up."
The
call came a day after US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex
Azar said the "window is closing" for the country to curb the surge of
coronavirus cases.
"Things are very different from two months
ago... So it is a very different situation, but this is a very, very
serious situation and the window is closing for us to take action and
get this under control," Xinhua news agency quoted Azar as saying in a
CNN interview on Sunday.
Azar said that in many southern states
where the virus is spiking, including Florida and Texas, the majority of
the cases were people under 35, and a large number of those will be
asymptomatic.
Azar said the administration is working with local
authorities and states to understand why the virus is surging in certain
areas.
He noted that treatments like steroids and remdesivir
were now available for COVID-19, and encouraged people who have had the
virus to donate plasma to increase the supply.
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