Anthony Fauci is sounding the alarm about ‘alarmingly high’ levels of new COVID-19 cases

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, warned once again of complacency in the fight against COVID-19 on Thursday when he expressed concern about the “alarmingly high” number of new infections every day in the United States.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and top medical adviser to President Joe Biden, commented to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on how the number of deaths and hospitalizations from the coronavirus is currently declining.

“But the number that is troubling, Anderson, is the number of cases per day,” he said. “When we had the big peak that we’ve discussed so often, which was two to three or more hundred thousand cases a day, it came back. But now the plateau is at an alarmingly high level. “

The daily new infection rate currently hovers around 60,000.

“If you’re at that level, you risk getting another wave,” Fauci warned. “So the way we’re looking at it now, it’s almost like a race between vaccinating people and this wave that seems to want to increase and do what’s going on, for example in Europe, where they’re really alarming right now.”

Between three and four million people now receive the COVID-19 injection every day in the US, Fauci noted, with more than a third of the population receiving at least the first dose.

“So if we could, as I’ve said so many times before, hang around there a little longer and get more and more millions of people vaccinated every day to the point where we’ll get enough people vaccinated to greatly reduce the risk of that wave,” Fauci said.

It was now a matter of handing out vaccines and “not pulling back on public health measures,” he added. “This is not the time, as I have said so many times, to declare victory prematurely. There we still run a significant risk of making ends meet. “