Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that the coronavirus was under better control in the United States. but the pandemic is not over – and the challenge is how to continue to improve the situation.
“We are at a different time since the pandemic,” Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told the Associated Press.
After a brutal winter wave, “we have already slowed down and moved to a more controlled phase,” he said. “This does not mean that the pandemic is over.
His comments came a day after he told PBS NewsHour that the United States was “out of the pandemic phase,” and also told The Washington Post that the country was finally out of the full explosive phase. pandemic. “
Fauci’s remarks reflect how health authorities are battling the next phase of the pandemic – how to keep COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations manageable and learn to live with what is still a mutated and unpredictable virus.
Fauci said the United States seems to have come out of what he called the “culminating phase” of the pandemic, huge variations that, at their worst, cause hundreds of thousands of infections a day, along with tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths.
The incidence of COVID-19 is lower than it has been in months, and two-thirds of the US population has been vaccinated. Nearly half of those who need a booster dose have received the additional injection and effective treatments are available.
“We are much, much better than a year ago,” he said.
However, there has been a lull before, and although the cases are low, they are increasing in many parts of the country. The vaccination rate worldwide is much lower, especially in developing countries.
To continue to improve, Fauci ticked the to-do list: Make more people fully vaccinated; develop even better vaccines; devise the best booster strategy to counter options; and make sure people have access to treatment as soon as they need it.
“We can’t get our feet off the pedal,” Fauci said. “There is a lot of viral dynamics around the world and we can still get another option that could lead to a new potential leap.”
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Scientific Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.
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