National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he does not see a return to lockdowns if Americans got vaccinated.
Guest host Jon Karl said, “So with that, and what you have described as, you know, the way to be prudent, the success of vaccines and boosters, we are not headed towards anything approaching the kind of lockdown we saw last year, are we?”
Fauci said, “I don’t see that in the future if we do the things we’re talking about. Jon, the thing that continues to be troublesome to me and my colleagues is the fact we have 50 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated. When you have that degree of vulnerability, and you have a virus like Omicron that spreads so rapidly, it is quite likely that we are going to see in some sections of the country a significant stress on the hospital system as well as on the health care workers who are getting exhausted by all of this. So the stress is going to be there. I don’t foresee the kind of lockdowns that we’ve seen before, but I am certain of the potential for stress on our hospital system.”
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