we turn now to a significant declaration from th
House official at the helm of this country's COVID
response. Dr Anthony Fauci says the pandemic phase of
covid in this country is over. He made those comments
while speaking with BPS PBS is Judy Woodruff. Yesterday
evening. Dr Fauci explained that Covid isn't going
anywhere, but this country has come a long way from the
case counts. We were seeing back in January, we are
certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic
phase, namely we don't have 900,000 new infections a
day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of
hospitalizations and thousands deaths. We are at a
low level right now. So if you're saying are we out of
the pandemic phase in this country? We are Dr. Fauci
went on to say that some people may have to be
vaccinated for covid yearly in order to keep case
counts slow. Let's go live now to Washington D. C.
Where Newsy White House correspondent Kellan Howell is
standing by live Kellan in a lot of people were taken
aback by that comment because we're so used to being in
a uh pandemic what more can you tell us about Dr
Fauci's comments? Well, it certainly is a major shift
in tone from Dr Fauci Lisa, you know, we've heard him
being asked by reporters Over and over again what is
the path out of this pandemic, How do we get back to
normal and Dr Fauci has repeatedly said that this would
happen in phases and that eventually we would shift
from being in a pandemic phase into what he has called
an endemic phase. And so in these comments in this PBS
interview, it's sounding like he's suggesting that we
may be now in that endemic phase of this covid
situation where rather than it being in control of
Americans day to day lives, that it's something that we
have control over and have the tools now to deal with
and live a normal life. And Dr Fauci, as you pointed
out earlier, talked about the low level of cases right
now, the low rates of transmission and how
hospitalizations are nowhere ne what we had seen
before. And so all of these things indicate that we
have shifted into that next stage of the pandemic. But
he went on to talk a little bit more about what that
life might look like. This new normal of living in the
endemic phase of covid. Listen, so if you're saying are
we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are
what we hope to do. I don't believe and I and I've
spoken about this widely, we're not going to eradicate
this virus if we can keep that level very low and
intermittently vaccinate people I don't know how
often that would have to be Dr. Fauci did go on to
clarify that globally. He think we still are in a
pandemic because other countrie are still facing much
higher rates of transmission and hospitalizatio
we are seeing here in the United States. But he did
point to the fact that many Americans have already had
an infection and so may have some form of immunity and
we've seen an increase in the number of people who have
been vaccinated. So all of those things combined help
to keep those transmission rates low. But I should
point out for our viewers Lisa that Dr Fauci did just
say a few hours ago that he will not be attending the
White House correspondents dinn this weekend due to
concerns about covid 19 transmission at the dinner at
this time, president Biden is still expected to attend
that event. Let's talk about th C. D. C. For a moment.
The CDC just released a new study on the total number
of infections. That that was pretty telling. Can you
walk us through the findings and and give us the major
takeaways? Yeah, well, the big headline here is that
the CDC now estimates that a majority, about 60% of
Americans have already been infected with Covid 19. I
want to pull up some of these numbers for our viewer
here. Just so we get a bigger picture of what that
looks like across this country. And the CDC is saying
that a lot of this is due to that major spiking cases
that we saw from the omicron wave this winter. So 60
of Americans overall have antibodies even more in young
Children, 75% of Children ages 11 and younger. The CDC
estimates have antibodies and cases of covid 19,
however, are still rising. They're up 23% from last
week. So something to keep in mind there. But the CDC
estimating that they, you know, undercounting has been
a serious issue throughout this pandemic. And at one
point, CDC was estimating that for every one confirmed
case of covid 19, there were three that were
unreported. So that's why we're kind of seeing these
new updated numbers now. But CDC officials are also
saying that despite these numbers, which do indicate
that most Americans have some level of antibody
protection, they're still recommending that Americans
should get vaccinated and should get booster shots
because those vaccines provide the broadest form of
protection against serious illness and hospitalization
and death.