Many Americans are eager to get back into normal daily life and to get over with COVID-19. However, top public officials warn that nations could face even more difficult health challenges later this year because it will coincide with the flu season.
Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Washington Post, "There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through."
He added, "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean." He explained, "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."
Redfield is pointing out that the two simultaneous outbreaks of respiratory infections would dramatically strain the health care system.
U.S. health officials must push more people to get flu vaccines this summer to minimize the need for hospitalizations if the health care system is again strained to its limits by COVID-19 patients, which he said, "may allow there to be a hospital bed available for your mother or grandmother that may get coronavirus."
If the current coronavirus outbreak had begun months earlier at the height of flu season, "it could have been really, really, really, really difficult in terms of health capacity."
Redfield had previously warned that the United States will feel the impact of the virus in months and years ahead, telling CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in February that the virus "is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year."
As of April 22, there are 2,629,378 COVID-19 confirmed cases, 183,520 deaths around the world. The United States alone has a total of 844,440 confirmed cases and 47,227 deaths. Today alone, confirmed cases increased by 25,696.
During the daily White House briefing Tuesday on the nation's COVID-19 response, officials were asked about the CDC director's warning.
"We were very clear in the guidelines that we believe we can monitor, again monitor communities at the community level, by using the influenza-like illness and the syndromic respiratory and gastrointestinal components of this particular virus," said Dr. Deborah Birx. "Obviously when we have flu, we're working on an algorithm where you test for flu, and then you test for COVID, and making sure that you're building the testing capacity to be able to do that."
Birx continued, "I don't know it will be worse. I think this has been pretty bad," she said. "When you see what has happened in New York, that was very bad. I believe that we'll have early warning signals both from our surveillance that we've been talking about and the vulnerable populations. We're going to continue our surveillance through the fall to give us that early warning signal."
Meanwhile, Redfield's warning seems to upset President Trump as he twitted, "CDC Director was totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN on Covid 19." Which he is likely referring to yesterday's report by the Washington Post. He ended with the statement, "He will be putting out a statement."
