COVID-19: The US has come out of the pandemic phase, says epidemiologist Anthony Fauci | International | News

The main epidemiologist of the White House, Anthony Fauci, affirmed this Wednesday that the United States has left the pandemic phase of covid-19, being with low levels of infections, deaths and hospitalizations.

“Certainly we are now in this country outside of the pandemic phase, which is to say, we do not have 900,000 new infections daily and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level now,” Fauci said in a statement. interview with the CBS television network.

Despite considering that the country is out of the pandemic phase, Fauci said that he does not believe that the coronavirus will be eradicated.

“What we can maintain is a very low level and vaccinate people intermittently, I don’t know how often, it could be every year, or even more time to maintain the low level, but now we are not in the phase of a pandemic in the country,” he remarked.

However, he pointed out that if the world situation is observed “there is no doubt that the pandemic continues”, since, he explained, there are still very rapid and widespread infections in different parts of the world.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), new daily cases of covid-19 in the US are not exceeding 60,000 in April, after the rebound suffered in January by the omicron variant where the million new infections per day were exceeded.

Similarly, those who died from the disease show a downward trend with less than 500 daily, and even with figures below 100 on some days.

During the interview, Fauci was also asked about the effectiveness of a treatment that the US government has opted for when treating covid-19, the Paxlovid antiviral pills, from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

The epidemiologist stressed that “it is a highly effective therapy” and stressed that in clinical trials it was shown that 90% of the volunteers who were administered this treatment were protected from a worsening of the disease and from ending up hospitalized.

Fauci said that the government has many doses available and that there are places where the person can be tested for covid, and if it is positive, receive Paxlovid immediately. (I)

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