Sep 9, 2021 - Science

Monster risk: Fauci says COVID cases 10x too high

Eileen Drage O'Reilly

NIAID director Anthony Fauci looking serious at a congressional hearing on COVID-19 — Anthony Fauci at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing in May. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Americans are now getting infected with COVID-19 at 10 times the rate needed to end the pandemic, which will persist until more people get vaccinated, NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios.

Threat level: "The endgame 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 modestly good control ... which means it's a public health threat."

"In a country of our size, you can't be hanging around and having 100,000 infections a day. You've got to get well below 10,000 before you start feeling comfortable," Fauci says.
Once enough people have been vaccinated, he adds, "you'll still get some people getting infected, but you're not going to have it as a public health threat."

Between the lines: Despite all of the buzz about the Mu variant, which appears to elude some protective properties of authorized vaccines and prior infections, the Delta variant continues to dominate in the U.S. and around the world.

The good news: Fauci says this means currently authorized vaccinations are still effective.
The bad news: Not enough Americans are taking measures against the Delta variant, which has already upped the stakes.
And, the longer it takes to end this pandemic phase, the bigger the chance we'll end up with a "monster variant" that not only eludes vaccines but also is dangerously transmissible.

Go deeper: The COVID vaccines are still the pandemic's endgame

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Monster risk: Fauci says COVID cases 10x too high

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