US epidemiologist, Anthony Fauci, hopes that in months he will coexist with COVID-19, having it under control

The chief epidemiologist of the US government, Anthony Fauci, hopes that the pandemic will go through a “transition” in the coming months that will lead to continue living with the coronavirus but keeping it under control and without involving a social and economic disturbance like the one it still causes.

During the press conference of the White House pandemic response team, Fauci expressed his confidence in this scenario and stressed that all the data indicates that the omicron variant is less severe than the delta.

But he warned against being complacent, maintaining all precautions and insisting that the unvaccinated – almost 40% of the country’s population – continue to have a high risk of serious illness or death.

The omicron variant is hitting hard in the United States as shown by the data presented by the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Rochelle Walensky: an average of 240,400 new cases last week, 60% more than the previous one, with a 14% increase in hospitalizations and 7% in the case of deaths.

Walensky nevertheless defended the new recommendations of the CDC that reduce the isolation for asymptomatic infected persons to five days.

After remembering that the level of transmissibility is very high in the two days before presenting symptoms and between two and three days after, he assured that five days after the last symptoms the risk of contagion drops substantially.

In addition, he considered it unnecessary to do more tests from that moment, because according to he warned there are cases in which the PCR tests positive up to twelve weeks after infection, and that does not mean that the infected person is contagious.

Fauci insisted that despite the fact that omicron is highly transmissible, the reinforcements of the vaccines give those who put them the necessary level of protection in case of contagion, so that said protection is optimal.

That is why he again asked all those vaccinated to get said booster, although he did not want to speculate on the need for a fourth injection.

To questions from journalists about this possibility, he said that you have to go step by step and although that fourth dose may be necessary later, now you have to focus on getting the third or getting vaccinated who has not yet done so.