White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a recent interview that he believed that people would have to begin “living with COVID.” He also said that he had doubts that the virus could be eradicated in future.
On Sunday, the nation’s infectious disease expert appeared on the CBS show, “Face the Nation.” Speaking to the show’s host Margaret Brennan Fauci said that he would like to see a daily infection rate of cases in the U.S. to fall below 10,000 so that the nation could “live with COVID.”
When the host said that the current number of cases of COVID-19 infections were almost 80,000 per day, Fauci said that this was “unacceptable.” He said that it has been heard among people that “we’re going to have to start living with COVID.” He said that he also believed that it was the case and he didn’t think that anybody could eradicate it.
Dr. Fauci said that the only infection that humankind had managed to eradicate was smallpox. He also mentioned that a few illness had become almost nonexistent due to an extremely intensive and stringent vaccine campaigns. He said that the infections that had benefitted from such vaccine campaigns included malaria, polio and measles.
When asked if the nation was facing a fifth wave, he said that there was a “potential “ for it and that it would depend on what would be done in the next few weeks or the next couple of months.
He said that millions of Americans who were eligible to be vaccinated had not got their vaccine and some of those who had been vaccinated several months ago were facing decreasing immunity. He mentioned that both these factors were the reasons why there was a decreased immunity and increase in cases. It has been observed that vaccinated people can also get infected by COVID. However, the infection appears to be milder with minimal hospitalizations and rare fatalities.
A new virus strain of COVID-19 was detected in the southern regions of Africa and it was announced to the world by South Africa on Thursday. On Friday, the World Health Organization named in Omicron and called it a virus of concern. By the weekend, many European countries and the U.S. have banned flights from eight countries in the southern region of Africa.
