Coronavirus pandemic can become as deadly as the 1918 Spanish Flu, says top infectious disease expert

US top infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, on Tuesday said that coronavirus a pandemic of "historic proportions" has the potential to be as serious as the 1918 Spanish Flu in which over 50 million people globally died.

"I think we can't deny that fact," CNN quoted Fauci as saying during a Georgetown University Global Health Initiative webinar.

"If you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic, where anywhere from 50 to 75 to 100 million people globally died, that was the mother of all pandemics and truly historic. I hope we don't even approach that with this, but it does have the makings of, the possibility of ... approaching that in seriousness."

The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide--about one-third of the planet`s population.

The challenge in the US now is the resurgence of infections in the South and Southwestern parts of the country. Fauci said California, Florida, Arizona, and Texas are the states to watch now."They`re seeing record numbers of cases, most interestingly, among young individuals," Fauci said.

The coronavirus infection was first reported in China`s Wuhan province. From there, it spread to the whole world. So far, over 13 million cases have been reported worldwide and 5,75,000 people have died due to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, amid the rising number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the United States, the conflict between the White House administration and the country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, seems to have reached its pinnacle as well.

Several reports have by this point claimed that the US government has a major distrust for Fauci, who has on numerous occasions openly disagreed with President Donald Trump on matters of handling the pandemic outbreak.

Both Fauci and Trump have by now openly said that they disagreed with each other when it came to opinions regarding the country's handling of the pandemic outbreak.

"As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don't think you can say we're doing great. I mean, we're just not," CNN quoted Fauci as saying in one interview. In another, Fauci responded to the President's claim that "99%" of coronavirus cases in the United States were "totally harmless," saying he didn't know where the President got the number and suggesting Trump's interpretation was "obviously not the case."

Fauci further said that he is not satisfied with the "curves of the new cases", and added that something needs to be done, otherwise, "It's going to be very disturbing".

On the other hand, Trump had also criticized Fauci publicly by saying that the latter has made "a lot of mistakes".

"Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes," Trump said last week.

(With ANI inputs)