During an interview on Tuesday, chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci shared that the U.S. is “out of the pandemic phase” of COVID-19 as hospitalizations and cases have plummeted.
Fauci made his statement during an interview with PBS’s “NewsHour” when he was asked if the nation was close to the end of the pandemic.
“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci said.
During an interview with The Washington Post, Fauci clarified that the global pandemic is still going on, but the U.S. is going through a transition period.
“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,” Fauci said.
However, he said that the virus is no longer causing the same amount of hospitalizations and deaths that it had when omicron swept the nation over the winter.
Throughout the winter, Fauci said the U.S. was experiencing a “full-blown pandemic phase.” Then, he said when cases started falling, it moved into a “deceleration” phase, and now we are transitioning to the control phase.
“The way we were months ago, where we were having 900,000 cases a day, tens of thousands of hospitalizations, three thousand deaths a day,” Fauci said. “The deaths went from 3,000 down to 300.”
Fauci predicted we would hit a “control” stage of the pandemic by last fall, before the delta and omicron variants emerged, causing a spike in cases. Now he is saying the same, as new variants are not posing a threat.
The doctor said that omicron subvariants have started to spread, they are not impacting hospitalizations or deaths like their variant predecessor.
“Right now, we’re at a low enough level that I believe that we’re transitioning into endemicity. ... We’re not in the full-blown explosive pandemic phase. That does not mean that the pandemic is over,” Fauci said. “A pandemic means widespread infection throughout the world. ... In our country, we’re transitioning into more of a controlled endemicity.”
With cases getting better, the nation has started to adjust to a new way of life as mask mandates, restrictions, and other COVID-19 era policies continue to be lifted.
Even though mandates are becoming a thing of the past, COVID-19 is still present in our communities, and health experts continue to urge Americans to make the best choices for themselves.
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