Anthony Fauci sounds the alarm over the ‘alarmingly high’ level of new COVID-19 cases

Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, on Thursday again warned of complacency in the fight against COVID-19 as he expressed concern about the ‘alarmingly high’ level of daily new infections in the United States.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and top medical adviser to President Joe Biden, noted on CNN’s Anderson Cooper how coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations are currently declining.

“But the number that is disturbing, Anderson, is the number of cases each day,” he said. ‘When we had the great peak we had discussed so many times, which had risen to two to three or more hundred thousand cases a day, it came down again. But now it is flat on a disturbingly high level. ‘

The daily new infection rate is currently around 60,000.

“Once you are at that level, there is a risk of getting a resurgence again,” Fauci warned. ‘As we look at it now, it’s almost a race between people to get vaccinated and this boom that apparently wants to increase and do what’s going on, for example in Europe where they now have some increases really quite worrying. ”

Between three and four million people now receive the COVID-19 shot in the U.S. every day, Fauci noted, with more than a third of the population receiving at least the first dose.

‘If only we could, as I have said so many times, hang on a little longer every day to get more and more people into the millions of vaccinations to the point that we will vaccinate enough people who are at risk of that revival will be greatly reduced, ”Fauci said.

It was now a case of vaccination and ‘not withdrawing from social measures’, he added. ‘This is not the time, as I have said so many times, to declare victory prematurely. There is still a big risk that we will have to make do. ‘