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Two of President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisers on Friday rejected the idea of a national lockdown to remove the coronavirus pandemic.
“As a group, the consensus is that we need a more nuanced approach,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, who sits on the panel and is an infectious disease specialist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told “Squawk Box CNBC, adding that it was “not the group’s opinion” to institute such widespread restrictions across the United States. “We can be a lot more targeted geographically. We can also be more focused in terms of what we’re closing.”
Former U.S. surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy asked to help lead the group, said national lockdowns were recommended in the spring, when scientists weren’t as sure how the disease spreads and people were less tired of the disease. pandemic.
“We’re not in a place where we say, ‘Shut down the whole country,’ Murthy said in an interview with ‘Good Morning America’ on ABC, arguing for a more focused approach.” If we don’t, you will find that people will be even more tired, schools will not be open to children and the economy will be hit harder. “
Their comments come after another Biden Covid-19 adviser, Dr Michael Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Yahoo Finance in an interview Closing businesses for four to six weeks on Wednesday while paying people for lost wages could help remove cases and hospitalizations to a manageable level.
Osterholm later clarified his comments in an interview with NBC News, saying, “It wasn’t a recommendation. I never made that recommendation to Biden’s group. We never talked about it.”
A Biden transition official told NBC News that a shutdown “is not in line with the thinking of the president-elect.”
Rather than taking a comprehensive lockdown approach, Gounder told CNBC that state officials should focus on implementing tighter restrictions in areas of the country where the risk of the virus spreading is high, like restaurants, bars and gyms, and aim to keep their schools. open to students.
“I think of it as a dimmer, not an on-off switch,” she says. “I think we need to shut down only the things that are really helping the spread, and really trying to … as much as possible stay open, like schools, if they don’t help the spread.”
A handful of states and cities have started implementing more stringent restrictions, including curfews, mask requirements and limits on group gatherings, ahead of winter as scientists warn that United States is entering what will likely be the “darkest days of the pandemic”.
The United States has reported three consecutive days of record daily new Covid-19 cases, reaching a weekly average of 131,445 cases per day, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Many infectious disease experts, including White House coronavirus adviser Dr.Anthony Fauci, have attempted to distance themselves from the term ‘lockdown’, suggesting that the United States does not have to resort to widespread orders of stay at home adopted in the spring when the coronavirus first hit U.S. shores.
Regarding lockdowns, Biden has previously said he will listen to suggestions from scientists such as Fauci. The Biden-Harris Covid-19 plan, however, asks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide communities with evidence-based advice on when to close certain businesses or schools based on the degree of viral spread.
“I don’t think a full lockdown is necessary or useful,” Dr Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, told CNBC “The News with Shepard Smith” Thursday evening, saying he did not did not. I agree with Osterholm’s call for a full lockdown.
It would be beneficial to curtail some activities to combat coronavirus outbreaks, Jha said. Eating inside in restaurants, gyms and casinos has become “a real problem”, although other activities, especially if they are outdoors and people are wearing masks, may continue. he declared.
“A full lockdown is not what I would recommend at all,” Jha said.
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