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Arizona Republican Andy Biggs said Monday that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads up the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, needs to step aside and allow the economy to restart.
Biggs, who praised Fauci for helping slow the spread of coronavirus, said the long-term continuance of nationwide self-quarantines had put the U.S. economy at a standstill for far too long and could have a more significant impact if quarantines continue.
"I mean, he has said he has not considered economic or societal or social fallout for his remedy for the epidemic. And if that's the case, I think he gets some credit for where we stand today, but I think it's time for him to move on," Biggs said according to an AZCentral report.
Biggs added that Fauci has kept the economy "bottled up too long," and he would support a gradual and reopening of small businesses, as long as social distancing remains in practice.
With some regions of the U.S. reporting a so-called flattening of the curve, President Donald Trump said last week that he was working on a plan to restart the U.S. economy—more than likely in small phases—by May 1.
The announcement received mixed reviews, particularly from governors of some of the hardest-hit states such as New York, which is regarded as the epicenter of the outbreak.
Fauci has been criticized by Trump and other Republican leaders after suggesting during a CNN interview Sunday that the Trump administration acted too slowly at preventing the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.
"What goes into those kinds of decisions is—is complicated. But you're right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then," Fauci said on CNN's State of the Union.
Fauci apologized the following day for his comments, saying he'd used a "poor choice of words" during the CNN interview, according to AZCentral.
Meanwhile, Biggs said Fauci's broad approach to combating the coronavirus has damaged the U.S. economy and could lead to many businesses closing permanently.
Still, it may still be too soon to consider reopening the economy and easing self-quarantine restrictions in the U.S., medical experts said.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 1.8 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, resulting in 117,217 deaths.
Nearly half of those cases are in the U.S., which has 582,634 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 21,972 deaths reported, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University.
