Fauci dismisses rumours about resignation and says there’s still a ‘way to go’ before pandemic ends

Fauci says US can expect an uptick in cases due to an Omicron sub-variant

Anthony Fauci has dismissed rumours about plans to retire anytime soon and said that he wanted to see the US completely out of the coronavirus pandemic before he left.

On Sunday, TV host George Stephanopoulos asked Dr Fauci if he is planning to get “some rest” if the country is nearing the end of the pandemic during an interview for ABC’s This Week.

“I’m not so sure, George,” the US chief medical adviser said. “I want to make sure we’re really out of this before I really seriously consider doing anything different. We’re still in this.”

He added that there was still some “way to go” before Americans are out of the danger of Covid, adding: “I think we got clearly going in the right direction. I hope we stay that way.”

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had kicked off rumours about his retirement on Saturday, when he said the US might be nearing the end of the pandemic.

“I have said that I would stay in what I’m doing until we get out of the pandemic phase, and I think we might be there already,” he said on ABC’s Start Here podcast on Saturday, leading to speculation.

On Sunday, Dr Fauci added that he didn’t expect full-scale strict restrictions to come back in the US, but urged people to be “flexible” if cases increase due to the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron.

“I don’t see us going back into any more really very restrict kinds of restrictions. But you always have to have the flexibility,” Dr Fauci said.

“The bottom line is we likely will see an uptick in cases, as we’ve seen in the European countries, particularly the UK ,” he said. “Hopefully we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will.”

Though infections, hospitalisations and deaths are declining in the US, the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron has increased the caseload in parts of Europe and Asia, specifically in China and Hong Kong.

The sub-variant accounts for about 20 to 40 per cent of the new infections in US  states, according to data from the CDC.