RELATED: Dr. Fauci Says This Is Now the “Best Case Scenario” for Ending COVID. During a Feb. 15 interview on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes, top White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, MD, discussed the country’s ongoing fight against the virus and where we are in terms of ending the pandemic. According to Fauci, it is good news that cases and hospitalizations are going down every day in the U.S., indicating that “we’re going in the right direction,” he said. “But we’re not out of the woods yet,” Fauci warned. “You may be done with COVID, but COVID is not done with the United States … We’ve got to do what it takes to get it to be done.” While some states have started getting rid of mask mandates, that might be premature, according to Fauci—particularly because we are not out of the woods yet. “The CDC still now recommends masking because of the degree of infection that we’re seeing,” he told MSNBC. “But what I believe the states are doing is anticipating that we are going in the right direction and they feel they might as well just get back to trying to get some form of normality by pulling back on restrictions,” Fauci continued. “We’ve got to be careful about that. You don’t want to be declaring victory prematurely.” Fortunately, the virus expert does believe the situation is getting brighter. “If we continue to go in this direction, we’ll start to see a lightening up of the mitigations that are going on, which is what we’re all hoping for,” Fauci said. RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. The infectious disease expert also said that states making changes to their mask rules now is “entirely understandable,” since different health officials look at the pandemic from a local level. As COVID cases continue to decline, Fauci said there is “the different evaluation of what’s right for a particular community.“ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb “At the local level, there is a strong feeling of needing to get back to normality,” Fauci explained to MSNBC. “Now, if you look at the science of it, I mean the direction is going in the right direction. Are we there yet in every single place throughout the country? I don’t believe so. But there are some places that are looking at what the trajectory is, and are saying, ‘Let’s go with it, it’s likely going to continue to go down.’” As Fauci noted in his interview with MSNBC, the CDC does still recommend that people not up-to-date with their COVID vaccines wear masks indoors when in public, and that even those with all their shots wear a face covering in public when in areas of substantial or high transmission. But on Feb. 15, NBC News reported that several inside sources have revealed the agency could loosen these guidelines for states as soon as next week. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, is expected to discuss the agency’s mask guidance at a White House briefing on Feb. 16. According to the news outlet, nothing has been finalized yet. The CDC is merely considering a new benchmark for whether masks are needed at a local level by basing it on the rate of severe disease and hospitalizations in a given community. Fauci told MSNBC that the agency “continues to monitor these things and will make modifications of recommendations as we see the trajectory continue to come downward.” RELATED: Dr. Fauci Just Said When COVID Restrictions Will Really Be Gone.
