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After three years, the United States might be soon moving past the coronavirus pandemic, according to the country’s leading infectious disease expert.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the mouthpiece for the government’s coronavirus response across two presidential administrations, said during an interview on Tuesday that the U.S. was “certainly” out of the pandemic stage, though he cautioned that the larger, global pandemic was still ongoing.
“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Dr. Fauci said during an interview with PBS NewsHour Judy Woodruff, according to a transcript of the interview.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Fauci’s answer came immediately after he was initially asked, “How close are we to the end of this pandemic?” He called that an “unanswerable question.”
FAUCI SAYS ‘FULL-BLOWN’ COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS ALMOST OVER IN US
“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,” Fauci added. “So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are.”
The word “COVID-19” is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration taken November 9, 2020. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
The president’s chief medical advisor then followed his answer up by saying that the U.S. was “not going to eradicate this virus” and that the government should continue to “intermittently vaccinate people,” per the transcript.
He suggested that people may have to get vaccinated yearly and “longer” than they might expect in an effort to keep infections as low as possible.
FAUCI WARNS AMERICANS COULD FACE MORE LOCKDOWNS AMID SPREAD OF NEW COVID-19 VARIANT
“That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low. But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country,” he repeated.
(Getty Images)
As for the rest of the world, Fauci said there is “no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing.”
