Dr. Anthony Fauci has ’cautious optimism’ about Charlotte’s ability to host the RNC
Dr. Anthony Fauci said he has “cautious optimism” about Charlotte’s ability to host the Republican National Convention this summer amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert and member of the president’s coronavirus task force, made his comments in an interview with WCNC-TV.
“I have cautious optimism that things will be considerably better this summer,” Fauci told WCNC. “It won’t be completely out of the woods. This virus is not going to disappear. That I can guarantee. It’s how we deal with it that . . . will be the important factor.”
The convention is scheduled to begin Aug. 24 at Spectrum Center. As many as 50,000 delegates, journalists and others are expected to converge on Charlotte.
Like the country itself, the convention has been shadowed by uncertainty amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats have moved their national convention back from July to August because of the pandemic. And they’re making contingency plans for what would be a very different kind of convention.
Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, told ABC News that the party “may have to do a virtual convention.”
“We may not be able to put 10, 20, 30,000 people in one place, and that’s very possible,” he said.
But Republicans are moving “full speed ahead” with plans, convention CEO Marcia Lee Kelly told reporters this month.
Fauci said the outlook in August will depend on compliance with the three-phase plan to gradually ease restrictions based on clinical benchmarks.
“If you are successful in doing that, by the time you get to the summer I don’t think that there’s going to be zero coronavirus around — I think that that would be too much to ask for — but the level will be so well contained that you will be able to get so some sort of normality,” he told WCNC. “The level of normality will depend on how successfully you get into the different phases.“
The host committee for the Democratic convention in Milwaukee laid off half its staff this month amid uncertainty over the pandemic’s effect.
Jill Kay, a spokeswoman for the Charlotte host committee, said it has no plans to do the same.
“We don’t have any intention of doing what the Democrats did,” she said Monday. “We’re moving forward. Just like Marcia Kelly said, full steam ahead.”
This story was originally published April 27, 2020 at 11:45 AM.
