Despite increasing infections in 75 percent of the U.S., The White House Covid team has met only twice in the previous fourteen days, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed in an interview Friday.
“An official task force meeting … over the most recent half a month, has been around one every week,” Fauci, a member of the task force, told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.
By comparison, in the late-winter when New York City was in the pains of its first outbreak, the task force would meet all week long, Fauci said.
“Some time a couple of months ago, when things rotated around to more of the economic reopening, as it were, of the country, the number of task force meetings have diminished,” Fauci said Friday.
He also said President Trump last attended a meeting “several months ago.”
But Vice President Mike Pence, who heads every meeting, relays whatever is discussed to the president, according to Fauci.
News of the meeting slow-down comes as the U.S. on Thursday set a record number of daily coronavirus infections, according to an NBC News tally.
On Wednesday, Jay Butler, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s deputy director for infectious diseases, said seventy-five percent of the country is seeing a surge in coronavirus infections.
“Unfortunately we’re seeing a distressing trend here in the United States,” Butler said at a press briefing.
