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By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said on Sunday he did not expect the United States to resume lockdown, despite growing risks of infections at COVID-19 posed by the Delta variant.
“I don’t think we’re going to see any blockages,” said Fauci, who is also director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on ABC’s “This Week”.
“I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country – not enough to crush the epidemic – but I believe enough not to allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter.”
While Fauci doesn’t think the United States will have to shut down again like it did last year, he warned on ABC that “things will get worse” as the Delta variant continues to spread.
“We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated and who are not getting vaccinated,” he said.
The average number of new cases reported each day has nearly doubled in the past 10 days and the number of hospital patients in many states is increasing, according to a Reuters analysis. https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTZDR
At the same time, the number of Americans getting vaccinated has increased. (Global immunization chart) https://tmsnrt.rs/3tUM8ta
“The silver lining is that people are waking up to this and it can be a tipping point for those who have hesitated,” National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins told CNN on Sunday. “This is what desperately needs to happen if we are to put this Delta variant back in its place, because right now it’s having a pretty big party in the middle of the country.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and David Lawder; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Lisa Shumaker)
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