Dr. Birx says Americans who gathered at Thanksgiving need to assume they're infected with COVID-19, get tested this week

Dr. Deborah Birx said Americans "may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period," and urged everyone who attended holiday gatherings last week to assume they are infected with COVID-19 and to get tested this week. Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, made the statements during an appearance on "Face the Nation."

"We know people may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period," Birx said on Sunday. "If you're young and you gathered, you need to be tested about five to 10 days later. But you need to assume that you're infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask."

Birx noted, "We're really asking families to even mask indoors if they chose to gather during Thanksgiving and others went across the country or even into the next state."

Birx warned that she believes there will be massive spikes of coronavirus following Thanksgiving.

"Going into the Memorial Day weekend we had less than 25,000 a day, we had only 30,000 inpatients in the hospital and we had way less mortality, way under a thousand," Birx said. "We're entering this post-Thanksgiving surge with three, four and 10 times as much disease across the country," Birx said during the interview. "And so that's what worries us the most."

"We are deeply worried about what could happen post-Thanksgiving because the number of cases, 25,000 versus 180,000 a day, that's where- that's why we are deeply concerned," she said.

Birx said despite coronavirus cases and hospitalizations falling in the northern plains states, "we're worried that all of that will be reversed" because of Thanksgiving gatherings.

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