Second coronavirus outbreak in US in winter could be 'even more difficult' : US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Medical workers transport a patient outside of a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center on April 21, 2020 in the Borough Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (AFP photo)

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that a second outbreak of the coronavirus in winter could be “even more difficult”.

“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,” CDC head Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”

He said that a second outbreak coincides with the annual bout of winter flu, meaning that health services across the United States become even more overwhelmed.

“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he told the newspaper.

US hospitals are already struggling to cope with the increasing number of infected people with the coronavirus which has so far affected over 819,000 and killed more than 45,000 across the country.

They have become overstretched for resources and are now facing serious shoratages of ventilators, test kits, and personal protective equipment.

Redfield went on to say that if the flu and the coronavirus had hit the country at the same time during the first outbreak, “It could have been really, really, really, really difficult in terms of health capacity.”

President Donald Trump has been criticized for his administration’s slow response to the coronavirus crisis.
The White House has been seeking to deflect criticism by putting too much emphasis on the virus’s likely origins in China, with Trump and other American officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.”