Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned that the US is heading in the “wrong direction” as COVID-19 cases driven by unvaccinated people continue to surge across the nation.
“I’m not so sure it would be the worst-case scenario, but it’s not going to be good. We’re going in the wrong direction,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of Union” when asked about a model predicting that the country could reach 4,000 virus-related deaths a day if vaccination rates don’t improve.
Fauci said the country has the “tools to blunt” the curve predicted in the model, particularly with vaccines, which have proven to be effective against severe disease.
“We have 50 percent of the country not fully vaccinated. That’s a problem, particularly when you have a variant, like Delta, which has this extraordinary characteristic of being able to spread very efficiently and very easily from person to person,” he said.
“… If we don’t vaccinate people, the model is going to predict that we’re going to be in trouble as we continue to get more and more cases,” he continued.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert was also asked whether health officials would revise mask guidelines for vaccinated Americans.
“This is under active consideration,” he responded, adding that it was also up to local authorities to make that call.
“If you look at what’s going on locally in the trenches in places like LA County, the local officials have the discretion and the CDC agrees with that ability and discretion capability to say, ‘You know, you’re in a situation where we’re having a lot of dynamics of infection so even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask,’” he explained.
The seven-day average of new COVID cases in the US was up 53 percent over the previous week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
Currently, around 99.5 percent of COVID-19 deaths and 97 percent of hospitalizations are among unvaccinated Americans, health officials said.
“This is an issue predominantly among the unvaccinated, which is the reason why we’re out there practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated,” Fauci said.
