HCN News & Notes

Fauci: ‘U.S. Out of Pandemic Phase’ 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, declared Wednesday that the U.S. is “out of the full-blown, explosive pandemic phase” of COVID. He stressed, however, that the pandemic is not over. 

In an interview on PBS Newshour, Fauci said, “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase. Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands pf hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are.” 

Fauci said he didn’t think the virus could be eradicated but hoped that levels could be kept “very low” with intermittent vaccinations. 

“The world is still in a pandemic — there’s no doubt about that,” he went on. But the United States is “transitioning into more of a controlled endemicity.”