Australia leads on Covid, says Anthony Fauci

Anthony Fauci has applauded Australia’s use of lockdowns to combat the coronavirus and ­lamented the fact his home country failed to take the same ­approach.

‘What Australia has done is the proof of the pudding. When you uniformly implement public health measures, be that full lockdown or partial lockdown, you can turn off the surges’: Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci. Picture: AFP

Anthony Fauci has applauded Australia’s use of lockdowns to combat the coronavirus and ­lamented the fact his home country failed to take the same ­approach, fearing the worst is yet to come in the United States.

But he says he is buoyed by the success of vaccine trials and ­believes an effective coronavirus vaccine will be available from April. Speaking to The Australian and radio station FIVEaa, the head of the National Institute of ­Allergy and Infectious Disease and White House Coronavirus Task Force member said he had “no doubt Australia is the model” in managing the pandemic.

He said he feared cases were set to spike further in the US as a result of the huge number of ­travellers during last week’s Thanksgiving celebrations.

“We have been hit harder than virtually every country in the world,” Dr Fauci said. “Now, as we are getting into the deeper part of the cooler weather, we had a surge of cases that unfortunately is breaking all the records.

“On Thanksgiving we stood at around 260,000 deaths and close to 13,000 new infections.

“Our hospitalisations have broken previous records, with more than 80,000 people currently in hospital with COVID-19. Thanksgiving is our biggest travel day of the year and there was considerable travel, even though we have been pleading with the American public to minimise the travel, as difficult as that is on a such a sacred family holiday.

“We said there would have to be sacrifice because we know when you travel through crowded airports or crowded train stations you increase the risk of both acquisition and transmission of the infection.

“We are concerned that we are going to see in two to three weeks’ time after the travellers go back to work and back to school that we might see a surge superimposed on the ­already ­existing surge.”

While acknowledging difficulties in his working relationship with Donald Trump, Dr Fauci said the bigger challenge in managing the pandemic was the country’s individualistic spirit.

He said that while the people of Australia had mostly accepted lockdowns as being for the ­greater public health benefit and the best way to minimise longer-term economic damage, convincing the American people had been a tougher challenge.

“What Australia has done is the proof of the pudding,” he said. “When you uniformly implement public health measures, be that full lockdown or partial lockdown, you can turn off the surges. That worked.

“It’s clear that countries and states that do not embrace ­restrictions do not blunt the curve as well as those that do. The epitome of that has been the success of Australia.

“I know that Victoria is down to almost no cases or even zero cases. In the US, we are in a difficult situation because of the ­reluctance of substantial proportions of the population not to fully implement the mitigation methods.

“There is an extraordinary ­divisiveness in our country. When that spills over into the implementation of public health measures — where things like wearing a mask become almost a political statement — it really complicates the issue.

“There’s been some bumps, to say the least, along the way, but it has less to do with working with President Trump than the fact that our country is divided so sharply.

“There is a certain something that’s beautiful and attractive about the individualistic spirit, the pioneer spirit that we have in this country that goes back to our origins. But when you are dealing with a public health crisis that involves the whole country, that individualism sometimes works against you.”