WASHINGTON (AP) —Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday the coronavirus is under better control in the United States. but the pandemic isn’t over — and the challenge is how to keep improving the situation.
“We are in a different moment of the pandemic,” said Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in an interview with The Associated Press.
After a brutal winter surge, “we’ve now decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase,” he said. “By no means does that mean the pandemic is over.”
His comments came a day after he said on the PBS “NewsHour” that the U.S. was “out of the pandemic phase” and also told The Washington Post that the country was finally “out of the full-blown explosive pandemic phase.”
Fauci’s remarks reflect how health authorities are wrestling with the next stage of the pandemic — how to keep COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations manageable and learn to live with what’s still a mutating and unpredictable virus.
Fauci said the U.S. appears to be out of what he called the “fulminant phase” of the pandemic, huge variant surges that at their worst sparked hundreds of thousands of infections daily, along with tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths.
COVID-19 cases are at a lower point than they’ve been in months and two-thirds of the U.S. population is vaccinated. Nearly half of those who need a booster dose have gotten the extra shot, and effective treatments are available.
“We are much, much better off than we were a year ago,” he said.
Still, there have been lulls before, and while cases are low, they are increasing in many parts of the country. Vaccination rates worldwide are far lower, especially in developing countries.
To keep improving, Fauci ticked off a to-do list: Get more people fully vaccinated; develop even better vaccines; figure out the best booster strategy to counter variants; and make sure people can access treatment as soon as they need it.
“We can’t take our foot off the pedal,” Fauci said. “There’s a lot of viral dynamics throughout the world and we still may get another variant which could lead to another potential surge.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) —Dr. Anthony Fauci has given an upbeat assessment of the current state of the coronavirus in the United States, saying the country is “out of the pandemic phase” when it comes to new infections, hospitalizations and deaths, but that it appears to be making a transition to COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease — occurring regularly in certain areas.
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on the PBS “NewsHour” on Tuesday that the coronavirus remains a pandemic for much of the world, but the threat is not over for the United States, adding that he was speaking about the worst phase of the pandemic.
“Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now,” he said.
In comments Wednesday to The Washington Post, however, Fauci seemed to clarify his earlier remarks, saying that unlike the “full-blown explosive pandemic phase” during the brutal winter omicron surge, he was describing what appears to be a period of transition toward the coronavirus becoming an endemic disease.
“The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that. We are still experiencing a pandemic,” Fauci told the Post.
His comments come as health authorities wrestle with how to keep COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations manageable and learn to live with what’s still a mutating and unpredictable virus. The Biden administration has stressed that the nation has more tools — vaccinations, booster shots and medications — to better handle infections than earlier in the pandemic.
U.S. cases are far lower than they were in recent months. But health officials are keeping a close eye as highly contagious variants continue to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cases have risen about 25% in the past week.