Now, Americans are becoming infected with COVID-19 at a rate ten times faster than needed to end the pandemic, which will persist until more people are vaccinated, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci told Axios.
Threat level: “The end is to suppress the virus. Right now, we’re still in pandemic mode, because we have 160,000 new infections a day. That’s not even a modest amount of control … which means it’s a threat to public health.” .
- “In a country our size, you can’t be and have 100,000 infections a day. You have to go well below 10,000 before you start to feel comfortable,” Fauci says.
- Once enough people are vaccinated, he adds, “you will still infect some people, but you will not have it as a threat to public health.”
Between lines: Despite all the rumor about the Mu variant, which seems to elude some protective properties of authorized vaccines and previous infections, the Delta variant continues to dominate in the United States and around the world.
- The good news: Fauci says this means that currently authorized vaccines are still effective.
- The bad news: There are not enough Americans taking action against the Delta variant, which has already increased its share.
- And, the later at the end of this pandemic phase, the greater the chances of ending a “monster variant” that not only avoids vaccines but also too it is dangerously transmissible.
In depth: COVID vaccines are still the end of the pandemic