On April 27, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sought to clarify remarks he made a day earlier about the COVID-19 situation in the United States.
“We are certainly out of the pandemic phase in this country right now,” Fauci said on PBS on Monday.
“That means we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day, we don’t have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We’re at a low level right now, “Fauci added.” So if you say, are we out of the pandemic phase as a country? We are.”
Fauci, as he has in the past, reversed his position after the remark was widely reported.
“I want to make one thing clear. I should probably say the acute phase of the pandemic. I understand that this may lead to some misunderstandings.” Fauci said in an NPR podcast.
“I’m talking about an acute outbreak. Everyone agrees that we are not there yet. We are no longer getting 900,000 new infections a day. Is the pandemic still here? Absolutely.”
Speaking to news organizations, Fauci described the situation as moving from a pandemic phase to a manageable epidemic, but not out of a pandemic.
