Coronavirus US: CDC warns COVID-19 is spreading too fast to control

A US CDC director has warned coronavirus is spreading too fast and too far for America to control, saying it’s only “really the beginning”.

Coronavirus is spreading too quickly and too broadly for America to bring it under control, a Centres of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director warned today.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries around the world have managed to get a grip on their outbreaks and combat the virus as it arises, but that’s certainly not the case in the US, CDC principal deputy director Dr Anne Schuchat said, where over 30,000 new infections are being reported each day.

“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” she told The Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”

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Principal deputy director of the CDC Dr Anne Schuchat has warned there’s ‘too much virus to control’ in the US. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP

How rapidly new virus infections are increasing in America. Picture: Our World in Data

To date, there have been more than 2.6 million confirmed cases in the US, with 128,000 deaths.

The virus is continuing to rip through parts of America, with infections surging in California, Florida and Texas. Those states, combined, make up a third of the US population.

Renowned expert Dr Peter Hotez told the Houston Chroniclethe situation in his home state of Texas was “absolutely horrifying”.

“I think we should be red alert for coronavirus threat level. We need to head in that direction. Six months into this epidemic, and we’re basically to square one.”

Dr Schuchat echoed this sentiment, calling this most recent surge “really the beginning”.

“I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, ‘Hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this,’ and we are not even beginning to be over this,” she said.

“There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.”

The size of the US alone – and the fact coronavirus is hitting different states severely at different times – has made the public response more complicated than in countries like New Zealand or South Korea, Dr Schuchat said.

“What we have in the United States, it’s hard to describe because it’s so many different outbreaks,” she said.

“There was a wave of incredible acceleration, intense interventions and control measures that have brought things down to a much lower level of circulation in the New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey area.

“But in much of the rest of the country, there’s still a lot of virus. And in lots of places, there’s more virus circulating than there was.”

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What stands out after almost half a year into the pandemic is how very large the differences between countries have become.

Some countries monitor the outbreak well (blue line color) and have bent the curve, but not all.

Source with many more countries: https://t.co/ICaAsKelAg pic.twitter.com/Rx7AdnOcgt

— Our World in Data (@OurWorldInData) June 29, 2020

The CDC has always feared a virus like COVID-19 would emerge, Dr Schuchat said, calling it “stealthier than we were expecting”.

“While you plan for it, you think about it, you have that human denial that it’s really going to happen on your watch, but it’s happening,” she said.

“As much as we’ve studied (the 1918 flu pandemic), I think what we’re experiencing as a global community is really bad and it’s similar to that 1918 transformational experience.”

The only thing Americans can do to help curb the spread of infection is to practice social distancing, wear a mask and wash their hands – but nobody should expect the pandemic to slow, even as the weather grows warmer, until there’s a vaccine, Dr Schuchat warned.

“We can affect it, but in terms of the weather or the season helping us, I don’t think we can count on that.”