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Friday, June 2, 2023 | 
Coronavirus U.S. & World

Dr. Fauci says there likely won’t be a surge from the new COVID-19 variant

Will there be a new COVID surge from the BA.2 variant?

By Herb Scribner Herb Scribnerhscribner@deseretnews.com
SHARE Dr. Fauci says there likely won’t be a surge from the new COVID-19 variant
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, is seen through a television camera viewfinder during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing Jan. 11, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Fauci recently said there probably won’t be another coronavirus surge in the United States from the BA.2 subvariant.

Greg Nash, Associated Press

There probably won’t be another coronavirus surge in the United States from the BA.2 subvariant, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus.

The backdrop: COVID-19 cases have seen an uptick in recent weeks overseas, specifically in Asia and Europe due to the omicron variant’s subvariant, the BA.2 variant.

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Driving the news: “Hopefully, we won’t see a surge,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” program over the weekend, per The Hill.

  • “I don’t think we will,” he added. “The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted, so that’s really where we stand right now.”
  • Fauci said the United States doesn’t need to reverse the loosening of restrictions right now, either.

Yes, but: There will likely be a rise in COVID-19 cases in general in the next few weeks because of loosened COVID-19 restrictions and rules, Fauci told KGTV last week.

  • “I would expect that we might see an uptick in cases here in the United States because, only a week or so ago, the CDC came out with their modification of the metrics for what would be recommended for masking indoors, and much of the country right now is in that zone, where masking indoors is not required,” he said, as I wrote for the Deseret News.