Dr. Anthony Fauci Says COVID Won’t Be Going Away Entirely, Likely to Become Endemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, testifies at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The committee will hear testimony about the federal response to COVID-19 and new, emerging variants. Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images

White House's top medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said that it is too soon to project an ending to the pandemic, even if people develop natural immunity to COVID by catching the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Fauci said that the development of the pandemic is still an open question, adding that they do not know just yet what to forecast, according to The New York Times report.

Fauci was asked if this may be the year that the virus becomes endemic, which would mean that it is still circulating but does not disrupt society.

He answered that he hopes that it would be the case, but that would only happen if we do not get another variant that eludes immune response.

The top medical adviser also noted that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic.

The first phase was the "truly pandemic" stage, where he said that the world is really negatively impacted.

The first stage was followed by deceleration, control, elimination, and eradication.

He also cited that there is only one infectious human disease that has ever been eradicated, which is smallpox.

Fauci noted that that is not going to happen with COVID.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that it is still early to tell whether the surge in cases fueled by the Omicron variant will push the pandemic toward a more manageable phase, according to an NPR report.

Eliminating the COVID Pandemic

In November, Fauci said that it was feasible that COVID could be reduced from a pandemic emergency to endemic status this year if U.S. improves vaccination rates and booster shots.

Fauci explained that booster doses of the vaccines are important for reaching the point where falling infection rates allow the disease to be downgraded from the current pandemic public health emergency to endemic, according to The Guardian report.

Fauci said that people will still get infected and might still be hospitalized. However, he emphasized that it would be so low that it would be not something to think about it all the time.

He added that many people need to take the vaccine for the first time and others need to get boosters even to get to that point.

Omicron Variant in the U.S.

Omicron infections were half as likely to send people to the hospital, according to a new study of around 70,000 COVID patients in California.

Dr. Lewnard, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was the author of the study, said that it is more transmissible and will just at some point be a lot of hospitalizations that inevitably occur.

The study also found that Omicron cut the risk of hospitalization by half as compared with Delta, according to another The New York Times report.

Fourteen of Delta-infected patients died, while only one died in those patients that were infected by Omicron.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Dr. Fauci Addresses 'Open Question' Whether Omicron Can End Covid Pandemic - from NBC News