Dr. Fauci: Intensive Coronavirus Mitigation is Showing ‘Glimmers’ of a ‘Dampening Effect’

Dr. Anthony Fauci said there are signs that social distancing and other coronavirus mitigation strategies may be helping.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave an interview to CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Tuesday, in which he said “we’re starting to see glimmers that [intensive mitigation] is actually having some dampening effect.”

“But that does not take away from the seriousness of what you just described on the show,” Fauci went on. “We are clearly seeing cases going up. The people in New York are in a difficult situation, and what they’re trying to do appropriately is make the best of it by opening up facilities that might decompress the surge of cases that they’re having…We’re still in a very difficult situation.”

Fauci called for continued mitigation, but said that infection rates were “possibly” flattening out.

“Once you start to level off, then you’re going to have less people who are going to be going into intensive care, and then later on – later on, because it always lags – you’ll see a decrease in deaths. So what we’re starting to see right now is just the inklings. I don’t want to put too much stock on it because you don’t want to get overconfident. You just want to keep pushing in what you’re doing.”

Watch above, via CNN.