Charisa Bossinakis
The US is 'out of the pandemic phase’ of the Covid-19 virus, according to the White House’s Chief Medical Advisor Dr Fauci.
While speaking with PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff asked the physician-scientist how the virus was tracking and how far off the nation was returning to normality.
Woodruff said: “Here we are. It’s the end of April. It’s the spring of 2022. How close are we to the end of the pandemic?”
To which he responded: “We are certainly, right now, in this country out of the pandemic phase.”
He continued: “Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalisations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.”
Advert
Dr Fauci added: “So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are.”
However, Dr Fauci advised that the country wasn’t entirely out of the woods, despite cases dropping, and warned people not to get complacent.
He said: "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.”
His comments follow the country seeing a significant decrease in Covid-19 cases in the past two months, as the Omicron variant ran rampant in 2021.
In December 2021, the US broke a record for the number of daily infections, with almost half a million people testing positive for Covid-19, according to a New York Times database.
Dr Fauci also spoke with The Washington Post yesterday, 28 April, and said the US was in the ‘control’ phase of the pandemic as they are seeing fewer people hospitalised.
“We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity,” he said.
According to NBC News data, the US records around 51,000 cases a day, with just under 400 deaths.
However, the case average has jumped by 49 percent in the past two weeks, with many infections also unrecorded due to rapid tests.
But Dr Fauci explained that regardless of cases rising in recent weeks, the vaccination status remains high and many are becoming immunised from the virus.
He told PBS NewsHour: "If you add up the people who've been infected plus the people who’ve been vaccinated and hopefully boosted, you have a rather substantial proportion of the United States population that has some degree of immunity that's residual.”
If you’ve been affected by coronavirus and want up to date advice, visit the Gov.uk help page here. If you need medical help call NHS 111 or visit online