COVID-19: Fauci urges local leaders to be as 'forceful' as possible on wearing masks

As US nears four million COVID-19 cases, country’ top health expert Anthony Fauci said that state and local leaders should be as forceful as they could in coercing people to wear face masks. His remarks came as top health officials have repeatedly said that masking was essential to prevent further spread of the pandemic.  Currently, only 16 out of the total 50 states, including Texas, Ohio, New York, New Jersey and Georgia amongst others have mandated the use of face coverings.

'Be as forceful as possible'

Speaking at an interview with Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Fauci urged all the local leaders to be “as forceful as possible” to make people wear masks.

“I would urge the leaders -the local political leaders in states and cities and towns - to be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks,” the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said.

Even as the US reported over 77,000 new cases in a single day, Fauci added that America was on the road of getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control. In addition, he also revealed that a “promising candidate” of developing vaccine will go into an “advanced phase of the trial by the end o the July”.

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His remarks came three days after, Robert Redfield, the director of US’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserted that the coronavirus cases in the country could be brought into control within four or eight weeks, only if Americans start wearing masks. Redfield's comments were published in an editorial by Journal of the American Medical Association which highlighted that infection rate in populations could be drastically reduced with masking. Encouraging people to wear face coverings he said, that the time was now to embrace masking. Earlier this week, CDC published two reports that studied how wearing face-coverings could reduce the spread of the lethal respiratory infection and how the usage of maks was easily adopted in some racial and ethnic groups from April to May. 

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