Dr. Anthony Fauci is once again warning that more “pain and suffering” is in America’s future as a new variant of COVID-19 continues to climb.
The bad news from Fauci — an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served on former President Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force and is now President Biden’s chief medical adviser on COVID-19 — came just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its guidance to tell Americans in much of the U.S. to re-mask.
“Are we headed towards a period once again where we’re going to see lockdowns, businesses shutting down, masks routine for everybody, or is this potentially just a temporary setback?” ABC News correspondent Jon Karl asked Fauci on “This Week” on Sunday.
“Jon, I don’t think we’re going to see lockdowns,” Fauci said. “I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country — not enough to crush the outbreak — but I believe enough to allow us to not get into the situation we were in last winter. But things are going to get worse. If you look at the acceleration of the number of cases, the seven-day average has gone up substantially.”
“We’re looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we’re seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again, the solution to this is get vaccinated and this would not be happening,” Fauci said.
Fauci also said, “we are seeing an outbreak of the unvaccinated.”
The top U.S. immunologist’s comments came a week after he said Americans with underlying health issues might need to take a coronavirus booster, at some point in the future, to be protected against new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“Those who are transplant patients, cancer chemotherapy, auto-immune diseases that are on immunosuppressant regimens, those are the kind of individuals that if there’s going to be a third booster, which might likely happen, would be among the vulnerable,” Fauci told CNN on July 25.
Nearly 58% of all Americans, including children, have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the CDC. But the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have said that people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 don’t need a booster shot.
“People who are fully vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating in the country such as Delta,” the FDA and CDC said on July 7.
“Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time. FDA, CDC, and [the National Institutes of Health] are engaged in a science-based, rigorous process to consider whether or when a booster might be necessary,” they added. “We continue to review any new data as it becomes available and will keep the public informed. We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed.”
Last month, Fauci said people who are fully vaccinated might “want to consider” once again donning a mask indoors amid the spreading Delta coronavirus variant of COVID-19.
Fauci said on CNBC that “if you want to go the extra mile of safety even though you’re vaccinated when you’re indoors, particularly in crowded places, you might want to consider wearing a mask.”