Lack Of Cooperation At Federal, Local Levels Weakened US Efforts To Battle COVID-19- Fauci

The lack of cooperation both at the federal and local levels, as well as the divisiveness in the society, have seriously undermined the US efforts to battle the COVID-189 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during the first day of the Davos Agenda virtual event

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th January, 2021) The lack of cooperation both at the Federal and local levels, as well as the divisiveness in the society, have seriously undermined the US efforts to battle the COVID-189 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during the first day of the Davos Agenda virtual event.

When asked to describe possible faults of the US approach, Fauci said that there has been a considerable amount of politically mixed motivated messaging about what needed to be done from the top level.

"Another thing that is going on intensively in the Unites States and makes it extremely problematic to adequately address the public health crisis is when you are in the middle of a profound degree of divisiveness in the country. When public health issues become politically charged, like wearing a mask or not becomes a political statement, it is deeply destructive to any unified public health message," Fauci said.

The United States has the highest case count in the world, with over 25 million COVID-19 cases, including more than 418,000 fatalities.

"The other thing is the federalist approach where you have 50 states and territories, and each is given a degree of flexibility of doing things their own way, and the federal government does not want to tell the states what to do. So, we had a situation where the states were sort of left on their own, so we had an inconsistent response from one state to the other. ... But the virus is the same. ... We needed to have a good cooperation between the federal government and the individual locals which we did not have," Fauci said.

Shortly after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed a number of decrees, reversing some key policies of former President Donald Trump, aimed to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the country. One of the key documents signed by the newly-elected leader was the US rejoining of the World Health Organization and supporting the COVAX Facility, a global vaccine initiative.. The move was hailed by the WHO and many other counties.