Fauci says he is 'as confident as you can be' that the US will soon reach its peak in Omicron cases
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- Dr. Anthony Fauci is "as confident as you can be" that Omicron cases will peak soon.
- Fauci cautioned against being "overconfident" but told ABC's "This Week" "things are looking good."
- Cases across the Northeast and upper Midwest have started to "come down rather sharply," he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that the number of Omicron cases in the US could peak soon and start to fall.
When asked Sunday on ABC's "This Week" whether he was confident that cases would peak across the majority of states by mid-February, Fauci said he was "as confident as you can be."
"Things are looking good. We don't want to get overconfident, but they look like they're going in the right direction right now," he said.
Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, said Omicron infections in states across the Northeast and upper Midwest had peaked and "started to come down rather sharply." Cases are still rising in some Southern and Western states, he added.
"But if the pattern follows the trend that we're seeing in other places, such as the Northeast, I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country," he told "This Week."
Fauci also referred to patterns in other countries, such as South Africa, where daily cases peaked at 37,875 on December 12, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The country is now reporting nearly 2,000 new cases a day
According to Johns Hopkins University, the US is reporting about 204,000 new COVID-19 cases a day. The number of daily cases peaked at more than 1.3 million on January 10.
The Omicron variant, which accounts for the majority of COVID-19 infections in the US, is thought to cause a milder sickness than that of Delta but can still lead to hospitalization and death. According to Oxford University's Our World in Data, more than 150,000 people in the US were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Friday.
Fauci said the "best-case scenario" would be one where the virus did not "create a fear of severe outcomes" and stayed below "an area of control."
He added: "Control means you're not eliminating it. You're not eradicating it, but it gets down to such a low level that it's essentially integrated into the general respiratory infections that we have learned to live with."
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