Fauci: “We are not where we need to be if we are going to quote ‘live with the virus’”

It is unlikely the U.S. will eradicate the coronavirus and a “suspicious” new variant, BA 2.75.2, is on the horizon, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said Monday during a fireside chat with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“We are not where we need to be if we are going to quote ‘live with the virus’ because we know we are not going to eradicate it,” Fauci said. “The next question we ask: ‘Are we going to be able to eliminate it from our country or from most of the world?’ and the answer is unlikely, because it is highly transmissible and the immunity that’s induced by vaccine or infection is also transient."

Fauci’s comments came the day after Biden said “the pandemic is over” during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening.

“We still must be aware of how unusual this virus is and continues to be in its ability to evolve into new variants which defy the standard public health mechanisms of addressing an outbreak,” Fauci said Monday, adding that the intensity of the outbreak currently is “unacceptably high.” As of Monday, nearly 400 people were dying every day from Covid, according to the CDC.

Fauci attributed the persistence of the virus in part to the “lack of a uniform acceptance of the interventions that are available to us in this country.”

“Even now, more than two years, close to three years into the outbreak, we have only 67 percent of our population vaccinated and only one half of those have received a single boost,” Fauci said.

Fauci acknowledged that the pandemic is “heading in the right direction,” but warned that it is “likely that we will see another variant emerge” going into late fall and early winter.