The United States could get the COVID-19 pandemic under control by 2023 with more coronavirus vaccine shots, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday in an interview at the Reuters Total Health conference that falling case numbers will allow the coronavirus to become endemic — a regional sickness that impacts people to some degree, per The Guardian.
- “To me, if you want to get to endemic, you have got to get the level of infection so low that it does not have an impact on society, on your life, on your economy,” Fauci said.
- “People will still get infected. People might still get hospitalized, but the level would be so low that we don’t think about it all the time and it doesn’t influence what we do.”
Fauci said more people will need to take the COVID-19 vaccine to reach that level, according to The Guardian.
Fauci has been hinting at the COVID-19 endgame for the last couple of days. He said at a Bipartisan Policy Center event Monday that the pandemic will end eventually if everyone does their part, according to The Hill.
- “This will end, we are not going to be going through this indefinitely,” Fauci said. “How quickly we get to the end depends on us, how well we vaccinate, how well we get boosted and how well we do the kinds of things to protect ourselves.”
For now, Fauci advises people who are vaccinated to spend time together over the holiday season, as I wrote for the Deseret News. Any unvaccinated people will still want to take proper precautions to make sure they limit the spread of the coronavirus.