The United States is now “out of the pandemic phase” and is making a transition to COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"We are certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase," Fauci said on PBS NewsHour Tuesday.
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Will COVID be eradicated?
"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. So, if you're saying are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are," Fauci says.
To his point, COVID-19 cases in the US have dramatically decreased over the past couple of months as the Omicron wave receded.
However, daily cases remain two times higher than they were for most of last summer, according to CNN.
Whatsmore, new cases are ticking back up in most states, and hospitalizations have started to rise over the past week too. Although fewer people are dying of COVID now than during most of the pandemic, there have still been more than 400 deaths a day over the past two months making COVID more deadly than most recent flu seasons.
The reality, Dr. Fauci says, is that COVID won't be eradicated. However, the level of virus in society could be kept very low if people are intermittently vaccinated, possibly every year.
He clarified his statement to the Washington Post 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,” Dr. Fauci told the Post.
Dr. Fauci also stressed that COVID in the U.S. doesn't necessarily reflect the rest of the world.
"Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world infection that spreads rapidly among people," Dr. Fauci adds. "So, if you look at the global situation, there is no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing."
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Life beyond COVID
Health authorities are now wrestling with how to keep COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations manageable and as well as how to live with what's still a mutating and unpredictable virus.
Some health officials have been making subtle shifts, such as returning some focus to non-COVID areas, such as maternal health, childhood immunizations, tuberculosis, HIV and other public health concerns, according to Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
"I think there are subtle shifts being made at the local level health departments to normalize the pandemic response in a way that allows them to get back to the core work of their public health departments," Freeman says. "But those words that were used about the pandemic ending are not well circulated in the public health area right now."
Pandemic or not, the best way to protect yourself is to get vaccinated and boosted, social distance when necessary and wear a mask in large crowds.
