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Monday, March 17, 2025

Fauci: ‘Pandemic phase’ over for US, but COVID-19 still here

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1054 days ago
20220427
FILE - Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Speaking Tuesday night, April 26, 2022, on PBS’ “NewsHour,” Fauci said the global pandemic isn’t over, but the U.S. currently is “out of the pandemic phase.” But it doesn’t mean the coronavirus threat to Americans has ended. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)

FILE - Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Speaking Tuesday night, April 26, 2022, on PBS’ “NewsHour,” Fauci said the global pandemic isn’t over, but the U.S. currently is “out of the pandemic phase.” But it doesn’t mean the coronavirus threat to Americans has ended. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)

By The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

 

(AP) — Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci has giv­en an up­beat as­sess­ment of the cur­rent state of the coro­n­avirus in the Unit­ed States, say­ing the coun­try is “out of the pan­dem­ic phase” when it comes to new in­fec­tions, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths, but that it ap­pears to be mak­ing a tran­si­tion to COVID-19 be­com­ing an en­dem­ic dis­ease — oc­cur­ring reg­u­lar­ly in cer­tain ar­eas.

Fau­ci, the na­tion’s top in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert, said on the PBS “New­sHour” on Tues­day that the coro­n­avirus re­mains a pan­dem­ic for much of the world, but the threat is not over for the Unit­ed States, adding that he was speak­ing about the worst phase of the pan­dem­ic.

“Name­ly, we don’t have 900,000 new in­fec­tions a day and tens and tens and tens of thou­sands of hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and thou­sands of deaths. We are at a low lev­el right now,” he said.

In com­ments Wednes­day to The Wash­ing­ton Post, how­ev­er, Fau­ci seemed to clar­i­fy his ear­li­er re­marks, say­ing that un­like the “full-blown ex­plo­sive pan­dem­ic phase” dur­ing the bru­tal win­ter omi­cron surge, he was de­scrib­ing what ap­pears to be a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion to­ward the coro­n­avirus be­com­ing an en­dem­ic dis­ease.

“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 told the Post.

His com­ments come as health au­thor­i­ties wres­tle with how to keep COVID-19 cas­es and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions man­age­able and learn to live with what’s still a mu­tat­ing and un­pre­dictable virus. The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has stressed that the na­tion has more tools — vac­ci­na­tions, boost­er shots and med­ica­tions — to bet­ter han­dle in­fec­tions than ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic.

U.S. cas­es are far low­er than they were in re­cent months. But health of­fi­cials are keep­ing a close eye as high­ly con­ta­gious vari­ants con­tin­ue to spread. The Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion says cas­es have risen about 25% in the past week.

COVID-19HealthUnited States of America


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