Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday COVID-19 variants aren’t the only reason for troubling new spikes in some states — relaxing mitigation efforts too quickly also is to blame.
In an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and an infectious disease expert said variants “are playing a part, but it is not completely the variants.”
“What we're likely seeing is because of things like spring break and pulling back on the mitigation methods that you've seen,” Fauci said. “Several states have done that. I believe it's premature.”
According to Fauci, a plateau of cases after a big peak after the winter holiday is dangerous.
“Once you stay at that plateau, you're really in danger of a surge coming up. And unfortunately, that's what we're starting to see,” he said, noting “that's exactly what's happened in Europe in several of the countries in the European Union where they plateaued and then started to come back.”
“Whenever we see surges in travel, be that around the holidays or around certain situations like we did over the Christmas and New Year's holiday and other types of holidays, you get congregation of people… those are the kind of things that invariably increase the risk of getting infected,” he added.
Fauci said vaccinations will be key in getting to a place by late spring and early summer where restrictions can be relaxed.
“You're going to see an incremental relaxation of some of the restrictions… as we get into the late spring and early summer, we're going to have a greater proportion of the population that will have been vaccinated,” he said.
“There are 50 million people in this country that are fully vaccinated. That's a lot of people. And every day we get more and more. …. As we get a really, really low level of infection, you're going to start seeing a pulling back on some of those restrictions, I hope. And I think that's going to happen. I think if we do it correctly and we get the vaccines out at the rate we're doing, that will happen.”
Fauci also said he’ll wait for a World Health Organization investigation to be completed on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic before making a judgment on whether it’s a whitewash.
“You're getting a lot of conjecture around about what they did and what they were allowed to do or not,” he said of WHO investigators. “No one has been speaking specifically about that. When the report comes out, I'd like to take a really close look at that. And if, in fact, obviously there was a lot of restrictions on the ability of the people who went there to really take a look, then I'm going to have some considerable concern about that. But let me take a look at the report first.”
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