Fauci: I was not invited to attend the White House coronavirus briefing [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• During his interview with CNN on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, US’ top infectious disease expert, said that he was not asked to attend the White House briefing on coronavirus that took place in the late afternoon.
• If he were to be present, Fauci said that he would encourage people to follow the guidelines set by the public health experts to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.
• White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the succeeding briefings will be “short” and would feature President Donald Trump’s address regarding therapeutics and vaccines.

Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday that he was not invited to join President Donald Trump’s news conference on the coronavirus that proceeded later in the afternoon.

About an hour, prior to the start of the press conference at 5pm, he told CNN: “I was not invited up to this point. I am assuming that I’m not going to be there.”

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not respond to questions about the participation of other COVID-19 task force members like Fauci or Deborah Birx. She only said that members have to “tune in to see” if their participation is needed.

The event guide in the White House did not reveal the topic to be discussed or broadcast who would join Trump in the press briefing.  

If he would attend the briefing, Fauci said that he would urge Americans to apply the guidelines recommended by health experts, such as wearing face masks and observing social distancing.

“There are really some fundamental things, principles, that if we implemented that I believe we could turn this around in those Southern states, which are getting hit really right now,” he said. “We’ve shown that when you do those things, particularly the physical distancing and the universal use of masks, that you can turn around the kind of surges that we’ve seen.”

Fauci also suggested that state officials should suspend bar establishments to lessen the spike of new COVID-19 infections.

On Monday, Trump said that he was looking to restart the COVID-19 White House briefings. It was cut off in late April after he drew flak over his suggestion to use disinfectants as medicine to cure COVID-19 disease.

The “almost” daily coronavirus briefings which ran from March to April often showed Trump alongside public health experts including other occasional guests. Sometimes, meetings took long hours to adjourn, as they discussed other non-COVID-19 issues and highlighted verbal disputes between the president and reporters.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, McEnany announced that the briefings would be “short” and would mainly highlight Trump in “delivering information to the American people that’s needed on therapeutics and vaccines.” She also said that the briefings would include other issues aside from the pandemic.

Because of his COVID-19 handling, Trump’s approval ratings were on a decline. Numerous states have suspended their plans to reopen the economy because of the continuous surge of coronavirus cases in the past weeks. The president has been consistently complacent about the resurgence of the virus cases which he always pointed to the expanded testing. He also described it as “burning embers” that will be put out.

In the US, the novel coronavirus has taken away over 140,000 Americans’ lives. The pandemic has overwhelmed the hospitals and shattered the country’s economy.

Source: The Hill