'Coronavirus pandemic has brought the United States on its knees': CDC director

Dr Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that the country is probably about to spend $7 trillion because of coronavirus outbreak during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing held on Tuesday. 

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According to Redfield, the virus has "brought this nation to its knees."

Redfield made these statements as some US states are witnessing a spike in coronavirus cases and as per the health officials it is not because of increased testing. 

The former acting director of CDC, Dr Richard Bresser told CNN that no state has effectively transitioned from stay-at-home orders "to a public health model of testing, tracking, isolating and quarantining."

"We have to figure out how to make that transition in a successful way, or every state that reopens -- even those that have done a really good job at tamping this down -- are going to see pretty dramatic rises," he added. 

According to Dr Fauci, the United States must get control of the pandemic by fall or else it will be like "chasing after a forest fire."

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci said that the major goal as of now is to control the virus instead of mitigating it, which is happening right now. 

Redfield said that it is time to fix the broken system as the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted decades of underinvesting in the "core capabilities of public health data."

"This needs to be a partnership. It's not all the burden of the federal government to invest in public health at the local level," Redfield said. In reality, "if your funding of CDC was to go away tomorrow, public health infrastructure across this nation would just crash."

"We're right now the backbone of it."

Coronavirus pandemic continues to grip the American country with over 2.31 million cases of the virus. Out of these cases, 640,000 have been cured and discharged, whereas, over 120,000 deaths have been recorded in the country. 

"The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgings that we're seeing in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona and other states -- they're not the only ones having difficulty," Fauci said.

During the hearing, Dr Fauci made a plea to the Americans and said: "Plan A: Don't go in a crowd. Plan B: If you do, make sure you wear a mask."