As a nation, transmission has to get down to a level that’s “low enough that it doesn’t disrupt our population or the economy, our daily economic, workplace and social lives, which means it has to be low enough that it isn’t a serious threat to the health of the nation,” he says.
“We are certainly seeing the beginning of a surge of new infections,” Fauci said.
Across the nation, Covid-19 cases have ticked up 24% from where they were two weeks ago, and the US is now averaging about 38,000 cases a day.
On Monday, Philadelphia became the first major US city to announce a return to indoor mask requirements.
Wastewater monitoring is considered a reliable warning of what’s on the way.
After falling for weeks, cases in the UK had doubled from a low point on February 25 and would soon reach the height of the BA.2 wave when the subvariant was causing 88% of cases there between March 7 and March 21.
The BA.2 experience in the US looks a lot more like what happened in South Africa.
An average of about 502,000 vaccine doses have been administered each day over the past week, according to CDC data.
After a wave of cases caused by Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant that peaked in January and then fell, the UK saw a second increase in cases and hospitalizations with BA.2.
The UK began offering booster shots, or third vaccine doses, in mid-September, just a few days before the US did.
But even after they’ve dropped off, the body retains its immune memory to vaccines and can gear up quickly to make more if it’s infected.
People who’d had recent boosters had such good immunity that if even if they got infected with BA.1, they might not have known it because their symptoms were so mild.
Fast-forward three months, however, and many people who’d gotten boosters as recommended were six months past their shots.
“I think the question is what happens in the meantime, if actually booster campaigns and other things line up, then that might offset .