'Too soon to tell': Fauci talks about Christmas gatherings as he warns Americans to not be complacent

Chief medical adviser to US President Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci has said that it is too early to say whether Americans should avoid larger family gatherings for Christmas.

This comes in when the nation experiences a surge in new COVID-19 infections among children alongside lagging vaccination rates.

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.

The US recently surpassed 700,000 deaths from COVID-19.However, the surge of new cases, hospitalisations and deaths by the Delta variant now appears to be slowing.

Fauci warned that the Americans should not be complacent. "If you look at the history ... of the different surges we've had, it's come up, start to come down and then all of a sudden boom, come back up again," he said.