Anthony Fauci says America's 'pandemic phase' is finally over

Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases expert, says that America is finally "out of the pandemic phase," the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

What are the details?

During a Tuesday interview with "PBS NewsHour," Fauci, who currently serves at President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said that the U.S. is in a good position with COVID-19 when compared to the rest of the world.

“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci told anchor Judy Woodruff, adding that while COVID-19 will never be eradicated, it can be handled if community spread of the virus can be quashed as low as possible with vaccinations and other possible mitigation measures.

He told the Post for a Wednesday morning interview that while the pandemic rages on in other parts of the world, the U.S. is entering what he referred to as the "control phase."

“The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that. We are still experiencing a pandemic,” Fauci told the outlet. “There’s the full-blown pandemic dynamic, the way we were months ago, where we were having 900,000 cases a day, tens of thousand of hospitalizations, three thousand deaths a day. The deaths went from 3,000 down to 300.”

He added, "Right now we’re at a low enough level that I believe that we’re transitioning into endemicity. ... We’re not in the full-blown explosive pandemic phase. That does not mean that the pandemic is over. A pandemic means widespread infection throughout the world. ... In our country we’re transitioning into more of a controlled endemicity.”

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that as of February, approximately 60% of Americans contracted COVID-19 at some point during the pandemic and have antibodies against the deadly respiratory disease.