Fauci: it is a 'false statement' to say the US has the coronavirus pandemic 'under control'

• Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a Sunday interview on CBS that he could not say the country has the novel coronavirus under control as he warned of an expected increase in COVID-19 deaths over the next week.
• "We are struggling to get it under control and that's the issue that's at hand right now," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
• From January to March, the president repeatedly claimed that the virus was under control.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The United States does not have its response to the novel coronavirus under control, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force said Sunday.

"I will not say we have it under control, Margeret. That would be a false statement," Fauci told Margaret Brennan, the moderator of CBS's "Face the Nation." "We are struggling to get it under control, and that's the issue that's at hand right now."

Mitigation efforts measures are "key," he said. What happens over the next week is going to be "shocking to some" and even "disturbing," he added. His comments echo those of Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who earlier Sunday warned the next two weeks could be "our Pearl Harbor moment and our 9/11 moment."

"This is going to be a bad week," Fauci added. "If you look at the projections of the curves and the kinetics of the curves, we're going to continue to see an escalation, but also we should hope within a week, maybe a little bit more, we'll start to see a flattening of the curve and coming down."

Even with successful mitigation efforts that lead to a reduction in new COVID-19 cases, Fauci warned people should expect the number of deaths to "lag for one or two weeks, or more."

So far, there are at least 324,052 reported COVID-19 cases and 9,180 resulting deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Fauci's comments come despite Trump's many past claims that the virus was "under control"

From claiming Democrats were making the coronavirus "their new hoax" to saying "it will go away," Trump had consistently tried to downplay the severity of the outbreak as his administration struggled to prepare for the growing pandemic.

"We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It's going to be just fine," Trump said on January 22 in an interview with CNBC.

About a week later - at an event in Michigan - the president said the novel coronavirus was "very well under control," adding he believed COVID-19 was "going to have a very good ending for us ... that I can assure you."

Trump made similar claims that mentioned the virus was "under control "on February 23, 24, and 29, according to FactCheck.org.

"Everything is really under control," Trump said in remarks delivered at CPAC at the end of February.

Days after the virus was declared a global pandemic on March 11, the president reiterated that the US had control of the virus.

"It's a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something we have tremendous control of," the president told reporters at a White House press briefing March 15.

Last week, he acknowledged downplaying the coronavirus threat early on: "I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good," Trump said. "I don't want to be a negative person."

In January, the president reportedly dismissed early warnings from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, believing the warnings the novel coronavirus's potential impact in the US was "alarmist."

At a press conference Saturday, Trump told people to expect the "toughest week between this week and next week."

"There will be a lot of death, unfortunately, but a lot less death than if this wasn't done. But there will be death," he said.

At the press conference, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus task force coordinator said New York City, Detroit, and New Orleans areas would hit the peak of their outbreaks in the next week.

And get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.