On Sunday, speaking on the current situation of coronavirus in the United States, the country’s top infectious disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the coming week is going to be even worse. The death toll is increasing, even though the number of new cases has declined in some areas.

Talking on “Face The Nation,” Fauci said, “Even though you’re getting really an improvement in that the number of new cases is starting to flatten, the deaths will lag by one or two weeks or more. So, we need to be prepared that even though it’s clear that mitigation is working, we’re still going to see that tail-off of deaths. The first thing we want to look for is to see on a daily basis, is the number of new cases starting to stabilize?”

Fauci further added that the number of new cases in Italy has begun to stabilize in Italy, and hopefully, ‘New York’ too will see such progress once we reach the apex. 

“We haven’t yet reached that peak, and when you do, you’ll start to see a bit of a flattening and come down,” Fauci said. “Where we are right now is really approaching that apex, and that’s why what (Governor Andrew Cuomo) and what we’re saying is that this next week is going to look bad because we’re still not yet at that apex.”

Fauci said that, hopefully, things could change significantly within seven to nine days. 

According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 312,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus have been registered in the U.S., and more than 8500 people have died. In more than 40 states, Governors have issued stay-at-home orders for residents.