Coronavirus cases must drop “well below 10,000” cases per day in the U.S. for any chance at pre-pandemic normalcy, says Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I think if we can get well below 10,000, I think that would be a level that I think would be acceptable to us to get back to a degree of normality,” Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said Tuesday, CNBC reported. “But again, I have to warn the listeners, these are not definitive statements — these are just estimates.”
For perspective, the country’s daily case total was, on average, 83,500 every day last week — a 14% jump from the previous week —and hasn’t been below 10,000 since the outset of the pandemic in March 2020, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
Fauci said the nation’s 60 million eligible but unvaccinated adults are driving the latest case surge and that booster shots are an effective tool in stemming the tide.
As of Wednesday, roughly 195 million U.S. residents, or 59% of the population, have been fully vaccinated, with about 31 million also having gotten a booster dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
