Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, says the full-blown phase of the coronavirus pandemic could be ending soon.
Fauci said the combination of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and immunity from prior infections, could make the virus much more manageable going forward.
He says possibly in the coming months, more and more decisions on masking and other restrictions will be made on the local (and really, personal) level — and that local governments should feel comfortable to remove mask mandates soon, although many states already have.
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In Philadelphia, the number of people hospitalized continues to drop, down 75% from the peak a month ago. The city's health department is working on metrics that would help them determine when they can drop the city's mask mandate.
Fauci’s comments, in a report from the Financial Times, come as COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations have fallen dramatically from the peak of the omicron surge. The United States is averaging less than 200,000 cases a day for the first time since mid-December. The peak of 806,000 was about a month ago.
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Still, Fauci is not ruling out the possibility of local health departments reimposing certain restrictions, if there are local outbreaks in the future.
Some places are still being overwhelmed by the omicron surge. And deaths nationwide are still too high, according to the CDC, which puts the average number of people dying every day from COVID-19 at around 2,200.
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