‘We’ll know it when we see it’: Fauci doesn’t know when pandemic will end

Mary Rose Corkery, DCNF

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday in a Coronavirus Task Force briefing that he doesn’t know how to determine when the pandemic will end.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be a precise number, I don’t know what that number is. I can’t say it’s gonna be this percent, but we’ll know it when we see it,” Fauci said.

Fauci said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he’s unsure of the reason why virus cases and hospitalizations have kept decreasing in Texas after the state removed mask and social distancing restrictions almost a month ago.

The doctor said Tuesday that the decreasing numbers may be because “people are doing things outdoors.”

WATCH:

The weekly moving average of coronavirus cases went from 63,298 on Sunday to 63,407 on Tuesday, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data updated Wednesday. As of Sunday, there were 41,359 new cases, on Monday there were 62,435 and on Tuesday there were 61,258.

Fauci said he believes daily cases and therefore hospitalizations and deaths will decrease while more people receive the coronavirus vaccine.

“It’ll be obvious, as the numbers come down rather dramatically and when they do we’re gonna wind up getting really step-wise much, much more towards what we consider approaching a degree of normality, which everyone really quite dramatically notices it. It’s on the way, hang in there,” Fauci said.