Azar warns ‘window is closing’ on combating Covid spread

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned the country Sunday that coronavirus outbreaks in Texas, Florida, Arizona and other southern and southwestern states threaten to spiral out of control without immediate intervention.

“The window is closing,” Azar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have to act, and people as individuals have to act responsibly. We need to social-distance. We need to wear our face-coverings if we’re in settings where we can’t social-distance, particularly in these hot zones.”

Azar also called for shifting the country’s Covid-19 testing strategy to broadly test pools of people in high risk populations — like nursing home residents or meat packing workers. But in his comments on Sunday shows, Azar announced no new initiatives or resources. He focused mainly on personal responsibility — including a strong plea for people to wear masks or face coverings, a public health message that President Donald Trump has not embraced.

“We all own as individuals, our individual behavior to make sure that we are practicing appropriate social distancing and wearing facial covering when we’re not able to, and practicing good personal hygiene and especially protecting our most vulnerable citizens,” he said.

His call for universal mask wearing went beyond any remarks made so far by Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, who have largely avoided discussing the public health precaution. Both — particularly Trump — have generally avoided wearing masks themselves in public.

Yet Azar echoed many of the same talking points Pence made at press conference Friday at HHS playing down the severity of the resurgent outbreaks by emphasizing that a large share of new infections are in younger people less likely to be hospitalized. Azar also noted that doctors know more about treating the virus now than at the beginning of the pandemic, and have some drugs that appear to help some severely ill patients.

At that press conference, the first by the White House’s coronavirus task force in two months, the vice president declined to recommend masks even when directly asked. He also downplayed the outbreaks — which are so severe that a handful of states are moving to shut down bars and beaches — as localized “hot spots.”

But by holding the event at HHS rather than the White House and including only health officials — compared to past briefings dominated by Trump, his economic advisers, and CEOs friendly to the administration — the task force stressed the seriousness of the current moment, when the country seems to be losing ground weeks after emerging from painful lockdowns.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/28/azar-window-closing-coronavirus-spread-343055
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