Dr. Anthony Fauci said states that are currently seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases should be considering reimplementing stronger social distancing requirements, including closing restaurants and bars for indoor dining and drinking.
Coronavirus cases are currently surging again in the United States as many cases are seeing increases in infections. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal's podcast The Journal, Fauci called for these states to "tighten things up" in order to slow the spread. He specifically mentioned indoor dining as an area of possible improvement.
“We’ve got to tighten things up. Close the bars, indoor restaurants, either no or make it such that there’s very good seating," he said. "Make sure people wear masks, make sure they don’t congregate in crowds, make sure they keep their distance. If you do those simple public health measures, guarantee that you’ll see the curve come down. It’s happened time and again in virtually every country that has done that.”
He also said that he thinks "any state that is having a serious problem, that state should seriously look at shutting down." It's worth noting in an interview with The Hill the next day, Dr. Fauci appeared to walk back his calls for another shutdown.
"I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process, looking at what did not work well and try to mitigate that," he told the outlet. "I don't think we need to go back to an extreme of shutting down."
Dr. Fauci has previously called for Americans to avoid congregating at bars as a way to slow down the spread of coronavirus, saying that going to bars right now is "really not good. Congregation at a bar, inside, is bad news. We really have got to stop that right now."
He echoed those comments again at a recent event for The Hill saying: "We've got to get them to do very fundamental things. Closing bars, avoiding congregations of large numbers of people, getting the citizenry in those states to wear masks, maintain six foot distance, [and washing hands]."
