Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that the United States is “not necessarily” on the same trajectory as Italy, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.

“Obviously, things are unpredictable. But if you look at the dynamics of the outbreak in Italy, we don’t know why they are suffering so terribly. But there’s a possibility, and many of us believe, that early on they did not shut out as well the input of infections that originated in China and came to different parts of the world,” Fauci said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I don’t know why this happening there to such an extent. But it is conceivable that once you get so many of these ... they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with the tsunami,” he added. “It isn’t that they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Citing the rising rates in New York, Fauci said: “We’re going to get hit, no doubt about it, but the kinds of mitigation issues that are going on right now the things we’re seeing in this country, I think that’s going to go a long way to prevent us from becoming an Italy.”

Fauci also addressed President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Trump dismisses climate change role in fires, says Newsom needs to manage forest better Jimmy Kimmel hits Trump for rallies while hosting Emmy Awards MORE’s promotion of anti-malarial therapies to treat the virus, despite lack of FDA approval and testing for that use, saying his own cautions against such therapies did not constitute disagreement with the president.

“I, on the other side, have said I’m not disagreeing with the fact anecdotally they might work, but my job is to prove definitively from a scientific standpoint that they do work,” he said.

“So I was taking a purely medical scientific standpoint and the president was trying to bring hope to the people.”