Dr. Fauci Declares ‘We Still Have a Ways To Go’ Before We Declare Victory Over COVID

Here we go again.

In an interview with The Guardian published Monday, top U.S. infectious disease official Dr. 👤Anthony Fauci said that while the country’s COVID-19 cases are on a downward trend, states are opening up and more and more Americans are getting vaccinated, it’s still not time to let up — and won’t be for a while.

“We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go,” Fauci told the British paper. “But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer.”

Yes, new daily cases are down 53 percent since May 1. Yes, according to New York Times data, daily COVID deaths have fallen from a seven-day average of 3,301 on Jan. 1 to 392 on May 31. And yes, we have travel restrictions in place, as well as quarantines for those arriving from countries where the problem is more severe.

But, as always with Fauci, now is not the time to let our guard down.

“As long as there is some degree of activity throughout the world, there’s always a danger of variants emerging and diminishing somewhat the effectiveness of our vaccines,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Guardian.

And even though 59 percent of Americans 12 and up had received their first dose of the vaccine as of Friday — getting closer to President Joe Biden’s goal of 70 percent first-dose vaccination by July 4 — and cases are at their lowest level since