White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated Tuesday that U.S. COVID-19 cases need to fall “well below 10,000” per day to get to a “degree of normality,” according to CNBC.
Over the last week, the nation reported an average of nearly 83,500 new cases every day, which is a 14% increase from the week before, per a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
In an interview at the 2021 STAT Summit, Dr. Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said COVID-19 cases may need to fall as low as 3,300 per day to gain control over the virus.
He said, “I think if we can get well below 10,000, I think that would be a level that I think would be acceptable to us to get back to a degree of normality. But again, I have to warn the listeners, these are not definitive statements — these are just estimates.”
The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. plateaued around 70,000 to 75,000 per day for almost three weeks before starting to rise again toward the end of last week, according to the news outlet.
Taking those figures into consideration, Dr. Fauci said cases stabilizing at that high a level was a sign that the country had “really bad control” over the pandemic. He also noted that the nation could be “in for some trouble” heading into the winter if people do not follow proper public health precautions.
Approximately 60 million Americans are still unvaccinated, and most of them are fueling the latest surge, Dr. Fauci said in an interview Monday night on “The News with Shepard Smith.”
He explained Tuesday that boosters would help counter new cases, hospitalizations, and even the waning immunity of the currently available vaccines over time.
Dr. Fauci said the highly contagious Delta variant will also thrive if cases remain elevated in the U.S., which further will affect both unvaccinated people and vaccinated people with waning immunity.
He said, “The unvaccinated are clearly highly vulnerable, but as long as you get a high dynamic of virus in the population, you’re going to start seeing breakthrough infections, even more so than we see now.”
Dr. Fauci stressed the importance of vaccines for unimmunized, boosters for fully vaccinated, and face-masks in indoor settings, explaining that they could help curb the spread and avert outbreaks similar to the ones that are currently affecting Europe.
