Here's why Dr. Fauci says the U.S. is 'out of the pandemic phase'

Fauci assessed where the country stands in its battle with COVID-19 as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that because so many people in the U.S. have now caught omicron and other strains of the coronavirus, nearly 60% of the population — and almost 75% of children 11 and younger — now have antibodies to it in their blood.

Nearly two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, it’s not surprising that antibody blood tests would show a high percentage of the U.S. population has had the virus, Fauci said. He added that while immunity derived from infection isn’t indefinite, it does give people some protection against contracting a severe case in the future.

The CDC says nearly 220 million people, or 66% of the total population, are fully vaccinated in the U.S. Of that number, 100 million have also gotten their first booster dose.

When you combine the number of people who’ve been infected and those who are vaccinated, Fauci said, “you have a rather substantial proportion of the United States population that has some degree of immunity that’s residual.”

Even with an undercount, the U.S. is in better shape than before

“I am virtually certain that we are undercounting the number of infections” in the U.S. because many people are experiencing only mild or no symptoms, Fauci said.

Part of that dynamic is that people aren’t getting tested as frequently now — and Fauci said if they test positive without showing serious symptoms, they might not report it to local health agencies.

Despite a recent rise of COVID-19 cases, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Fauci reiterated that hospitalization rates are only rising slowly, unlike during the surge driven by delta variant. And CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday that U.S. coronavirus deaths have fallen to a seven-day average of about 300 per day.

The U.S. also has more tools to prevent worst-case scenarios, such as the powerful antiviral pill Paxlovid, which cuts the risk of getting hospitalized with COVID by nearly 90% and was authorized by the FDA at the end of 2021.

“There are a lot of doses available,” Fauci said. “We have sites where you can, as we say, test to treat, which means you can come into a place, get tested, and, if you are tested, immediately get put on therapy, if they’re eligible.”

The coronavirus will not be going away entirely

COVID-19 has killed nearly 1 million people in the U.S. — by far the most reported by any country. It has taken a particularly brutal toll on Black people and other people of color, and on poorer communities without easy access to health care. While the U.S. is currently in a period of comparative calm, the coronavirus is raising alarms in other parts of the world, including China.

“Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world, infection that spreads rapidly among people,” Fauci said. “So, if you look at the global situation, there’s no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing.”

The infectious disease expert said it’s “an unanswerable question” to ask when the global pandemic will end.

“We’re not going to eradicate this virus,” Fauci said as he looked to the future and COVID-19’s global reach.

The best hope is to maintain the coronavirus at low levels of transmission and pursue intermittent vaccinations, Fauci said.

“That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low. But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country.”

As NPR’s Joe Neel reported on Tuesday, “About 1.5% of the U.S. population lives in communities where there is a high prevalence of COVID at the present time, with 6.5% in medium prevalence areas and the rest (92%) in communities with low levels of COVID.”