Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for Covid-19, said Americans may still need to wear masks in 2022 even as he suggested that the US could reach some sort of normality by the fall.
Fauci told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” that while he can’t predict when Americans could go back to pre-pandemic behaviors, he thinks “we’re going to have a significant degree of normality beyond the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year.”
Asked by Bash whether or not Americans would still need to wear masks a year from now, Fauci said it was “possible” depending on the levels of coronavirus around the country.
“If you see the levels coming down very low, I want it to keep going down to a baseline that’s so low there is virtually no threat,” Fauci said. “It’ll never be zero but a minimal minimal threat.”
Fauci added that Americans wouldn’t necessarily need to wear masks at the point when most people in the country are vaccinated. “If you combine getting most of the people in the country vaccinated with getting the level of virus in the community very, very low, then I believe you’re going to be able to say, you know, for the most part, we don’t necessarily have to wear masks,” he said.