As the US witnesses a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, a member of the transition team of President-Elect Joe Biden has referred to the possibility of imposing a nationwide lockdown. President Donald Trump had consistently rejected the use of lockdowns, citing their adverse economic impact.
Dr Michael Osterholm, who is director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, is an adviser to Biden. He is one of 12 members of Biden's COVID-19 advisory board that was announced on Monday.
Osterholm made the comments in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Wednesday. CNBC reported that Osterholm argued, "A nationwide lockdown would drive the number of new cases and hospitalisations down to manageable levels while the world awaits a vaccine."
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that... If we did that, then we could lockdown for four-to-six weeks," Osterholm was quoted as saying by CNBC.
Osterholm cited the success of lockdowns in containing spread of COVID-19 in countries such as New Zealand and Australia. "“We could really watch ourselves cruising into the vaccine availability in the first and second quarter of next year while bringing back the economy long before that,” Osterholm was quoted as saying by CNBC.
Osterholm warned the US was headed for "dark days" on its current trajectory of COVID-19 cases, before a vaccine became available.
Osterholm had warned earlier this week that the US was about to "enter COVID hell" given the massive surge in COVID-19 cases and the resultant strain on the healthcare system.
Osterholm told Minnesota Public Radio on Monday, “When we were at 32,000 cases a day in the United States, people thought that maybe things were going to start going away... As you saw, we're now at 125,000 cases per day. We're seeing hospitals right now completely overwhelmed in a number of states.”
Osterholm warned the number of COVID-19 cases could climb for at least the next two-three months.
Biden had consistently claimed he would not hesitate to impose a lockdown to curb COVID-19.
The US currently leads the world in both number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. As of Thursday morning, a total of 10,708,630 cases had been recorded in the US, while 247,397 people had died from COVID-19.
