Washington (AFP)

Anthony Fauci, the United States' top infectious disease expert, reiterated that the United States, despite President Donald Trump's denial, was seeing the Covid-19 pandemic worsen due to the lack of a coherent strategy against the virus.

Parts of the country, like New York, "have taken control," Anthony Fauci told FiveThirtyEight on Thursday.

"But as a country, when we compare ourselves to other countries, I don't think you can say that we are doing well. It just isn't the case," he warned. .

The immunologist has sounded the alarm for days in interviews when the number of new cases in the South and West of the United States explodes. The country again broke a record Thursday with 65,000 cases detected in 24 hours - about twice as much as the peaks of spring, when the epicenter was in New York.

On Wednesday, doctor Fauci had estimated that certain states had gone "too fast" in the deconfinement, and that a new containment could prove necessary, in a podcast of the Wall Street Journal.

And Thursday, in an online conference, he regretted that some southern states did not follow the instructions to gradually reopen and "jumped the steps".

Last week, he warned, after reassuring remarks from Vice President Mike Pence, that the United States was heading straight for the 100,000 new cases per day (that day, the daily balance was around 40,000 case).

His warnings are increasingly tainted with politicization of the epidemic. "We have to hypothesize that without the divisions that are ours, we would have a more coordinated approach," he told FiveThirtyEight.

It is an understatement: the confinement - just like the deconfinement - was done in dispersed order, State by State, with those governed by Republicans in general more quick to lift the restrictions. At the federal level, the White House had published guidelines for a gradual reopening of the economy, with criteria for reducing the number of cases and increasing screening capacity.

But very few states met these criteria, Donald Trump himself urged to accelerate deconfinement, and Dr. Fauci today clearly attributes the current outbreak to a precipitous deconfinement and the carelessness with which South Americans have resumed their activities without respecting barrier gestures.

Donald Trump downplays the daily records: "For the hundredth time, the reason we have so many cases, compared to other countries that do not do better than us by far, is that we test a lot more and better, "he tweeted. This is false, because the rate of increase in contagions is much higher than the rate of increase in tests, according to official data.

© 2020 AFP