Story at a glance
- White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci believes the current coronavirus surge could peak by the end of January.
- Fauci has formed his prediction based on the U.S. vaccination rate and how quickly the omicron variant peaked in South Africa.
- Only 61.9 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
As coronavirus cases surge in the United States amid the new omicron variant, White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci has a prediction offering some hope: He believes the surge could peak by the end of January.
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“I would imagine, given the size of our country and the diversity of vaccination versus not vaccination, that it likely will be more than a couple of weeks,” Fauci told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Wednesday, “probably by the end of January, I would think.”
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Fauci based his prediction on the U.S. vaccination rate and how quickly the omicron variant peaked in South Africa, the country where it was first reported.
“It certainly peaked pretty quickly in South Africa,” Fauci said. “It went up almost vertically and turned around very quickly.”
“I would hope that’s the case,” he said, adding, however, that “there’s no guarantee that that would happen.”
In the U.S., cases have risen dramatically in recent weeks. Last week, Fauci reported the weekly average at about 150,000 new cases. However, this week, the seven-day COVID-19 case average in the U.S. was 280,000.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 61.9 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
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