Dr. Anthony Fauci said sufficient contact tracing is one key prerequisite when talking about starting to reopen parts of the country during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The minimum thing is that you’ve got to be able to identify, isolate, get out of circulation, and do adequate and appropriate contact tracing as new cases arise,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview that aired Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” show.
Contact tracing is a typically labor-intensive process to track people who were recently in proximity to someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Dr. Fauci said pulling back on mitigation and physical separations will lead to infections.
“The real proof of the pudding of the success of this reentry is how quickly and effectively you identify them, you get them out of circulation, you give them care where needed, and you do contact tracing so that you don’t have a beginning of a peak,” said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “If you don’t have that, then you may have some difficulty.”
Dr. Fauci’s comments come as President Trump eyes a plan to reopen parts of the country, potentially in the next few weeks.
The president on Tuesday said it will ultimately be up to governors across the U.S. on when to loosen social distancing guidelines and permit businesses to reopen, after saying earlier in the week that he had the final say.
