Dr Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that the Covid-19 crisis in the US may become worse than ever after an increase in holiday travel among Americans.
Dr Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned of a surge in cases after Christmas and New Year’s during an interview on CNN.
Holiday gatherings were “going to happen” despite the warnings from public health officials, he told CNN, saying "it's very tough for people not to do that".
“We’re really at a very critical point,” Dr Fauci said.
He said that a surge of infections through people gathering and travelling would put more pressure on the health system.
“With the hospitalisations over 120,000, we really are at a critical stage," Dr Fauci said.
He endorsed president-elect Joe Biden’s assessment on Wednesday that the pandemic’s “darkest days are ahead of us, not behind us".
“We’re averaging a death rate of close to 3,000 a day,” Mr Biden said.
“That means we will lose tens of thousands of more lives in the months to come and the vaccine won’t be able to stop that.”
More than 340,000 Americans have already died from Covid-19, and the US has repeatedly passed its daily records for the highest number of coronavirus infections several times in December.
The virus infected about 226,000 Americans on Saturday.
While the US has started to inoculate front-line healthcare workers and residents in long-term care centres, it will take months before the majority of Americans will have access to the vaccines.
Dr Fauci predicted that enough Americans would receive the vaccine to achieve herd immunity by the end of summer.
"“I hope that, by the time we get to the fall, we will reach that critical percentage of people,” he said.
Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
