The United States' top infectious disease official, Anthony Fauci, is expected to issue a stern warning against reopening the economy too soon during a Senate hearing Tuesday, saying it risks multiple new coronavirus outbreaks throughout the country.
The U.S. risks "the danger of trying to open the country prematurely,” Fauci said in an email to a New York Times reporter ahead of his testimony. Fauci and other health officials — and even the committee chairman — will appear remotely because of potential exposure to the virus.
"If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country,” Fauci wrote. "This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”