COVID-19 LATEST: Over 12,000 cases, 554 deaths in state

The state passed 12,000 positive COVID-19 cases today, while hospitalizations also ticked upward ”“ including in Fairfield County, which had experienced a decline but saw an increase of six since yesterday. Fairfield County now has a total of 248 deaths attributed to the coronavirus.

A county-by-county breakdown includes:

FAUCI: “NO ONE IS GOING TO DENY” SLOW RESPONSE HAS COST LIVES
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN this morning that “no one is going to deny” that lives could have been saved if the U.S. had taken earlier action in combating the spread of COVID-19.

“As I’ve said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

“Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci said. “Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated.”

His remarks were echoed on Fox News by Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “If we’d acted on some of those warnings earlier, we’d be in a much better position in terms of diagnostics and possibly masks and possibly personal protective equipment and getting our hospitals ready,” Inglesby said.

Fauci indicated it will be up to individual states to decide when they can start reopening businesses.

“I believe that, if we have a good, measured way of rolling into this, steps towards normality, that we hope, by the time we get to November, that we will be able to do it in a way which is the standard way,” he told CNN. “However, and I don”™t want to be the pessimistic person, there is always the possibility, as we get into next fall and the beginning of early winter, that we could see a rebound.”

Fauci also said he hopes that Americans will be able to safely vote at the polls in November, but added that he “can”™t guarantee it.”

BIDEN: TRUMP “NEEDS TO DO A BETTER JOB”
Former vice president and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also urged caution in a New York Times op-ed today.

“As we prepare to reopen America, we have to remember what this crisis has taught us: The administration”™s failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation led to catastrophic results,” Biden wrote. “We cannot repeat those mistakes.”

“President Trump needs to use his full powers under the Defense Production Act to fight the disease with every tool at our disposal,” Biden continued. “He needs to get the federal response organized and stop making excuses. For more Americans to go back to their jobs, the president needs to do better at his job.

“Second,” Biden wrote, “there needs to be widespread, easily available and prompt testing ”“ and a contact tracing strategy that protects privacy. A recent report from Mr. Trump”™s Department of Health and Human Services made clear that we are far from achieving this goal.”

Biden also called for hospitals and the health care system to be properly staffed with equipment and personnel both now and for future potential outbreaks.

“The American people have already paid too high a price in illness, death and economic loss,” he wrote. “This time, the White House has to get it right.”

As of this writing, there are more than 547,000 positive cases and about 21,700 virus-related deaths in the U.S., and over 1.8 million positive cases and more than 113,000 deaths globally.