Fauci 'strongly suspects' if COVID-19 deaths will go down in winter

Chief medical adviser to US President Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci said that he “strongly suspects” COVID-19 deaths will go down in the winter.

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Fauci was asked if he expected another surge of coronavirus cases due to the delta variant or other variants.

To this, he responded that it would depend on how well the United States can vaccinate the millions of Americans who have not yet gotten a single shot.

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In a report by The Hill, Fauci was quoted as saying, “Fortunately, right now, over the last few weeks, we've seen a turnaround in the slope in going down in both cases and hospitalisations. Deaths are still up, but it's really flattening, so it's a lagging indicator."

He further said that how quickly the cases will go down and how thoroughly they go down is going to completely depend on a number of circumstances.

He added that this will be influenced by things like the colder weather, people doing things indoors, how well they go by the CDC guidelines.

Earlier, Fauci had said that it is too early to say whether Americans should avoid larger family gatherings for Christmas.

In an interview with "Face the Nation," Fauci said that it is too soon to tell whether holiday gatherings should be limited due to the ongoing pandemic. He further added that Americans need to focus on lowering the number of new infections and hospitalisations.

"We've just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we're going to do at a particular time," Fauci said.

"Let's focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down. And we can do it by people getting vaccinated and also in the situation where boosters are appropriate to get people boosted," he added.