A major concern for the healthcare system is that there are not enough hospital beds and ventilators in the United States to handle a massive spike in coronavirus infections at one time.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, if the country’s healthcare system is to prepared to handle an explosion of coronavirus cases.
He asked, “How worried are you that this virus is going to overwhelm hospitals? Not just beds, but ventilators. We only have 160,00 ventilators. And could we be in a situation where you have to ration who gets the bed and who gets the ventilator?”
Fauci said that if the country experiences a worst-case scenario, the healthcare system could be overwhelmed.
“If we have a worst-case scenario, we’ve got to admit it we could be overwhelmed,” Fauci said. “Are we going to have a worst-case scenario? I don’t think so. I hope not.”
Watch the interview below:
FAUCI: "Our job is to not let that worst case scenario happen." #FNS #FOXNews pic.twitter.com/Vr8QZAZTZN
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) March 15, 2020
Additionally, Fauci said that no country in the world would be prepared to handle a worst-case scenario of an outbreak.
“Our job is to not let that worst-case scenario happen,” he added.
His comments come after Seema Verma, the head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was criticized after she failed to answer a question about whether or not the U.S. has enough ventilators to handle a worst-case scenario with the outbreak.
Wallace then asked Fauci if he thinks the U.S. could soon take steps such as locking down portions of the country or implementing travel restrictions to stop the spread of the outbreak. Fauci said he believes the country could contain the outbreak without taking such drastic measures.
“We feel that with rather stringent mitigation and containment, without necessarily complete lockdown, we’d be able to prevent ourselves from getting to where unfortunately Italy is now.”
The latest data from Johns Hopkins University finds that the United States has 2,952 confirmed cases of the virus. However, that number may spike as more states roll out drive-thru testing centers for the coronavirus, making it easier for more Americans to get tested for the virus.
