Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States lead infectious disease specialist, said this weekend he expects the number of deaths from COVID-19 to go down this winter.
"Fortunately, right now, over the last few weeks, we've seen a turnaround in the slope in going down in both cases and hospitalizations," Dr. Fauci told Greta Van Susteren's Sunday television program "Full Court." "Deaths are still up, but it's really flattening, so it's a lagging indicator. I strongly suspect that you're going to start seeing the deaths go down similar to the hospitalizations; how quickly they go down and how thoroughly they go down is going to depend a lot on a number of circumstances, which will be influenced by things like the colder weather, people doing things indoors, and how well they go by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines."
According to The Hill, experts in the field are divided on whether the delta variant will be the last "surge" of the virus the country sees.
George Washington University Public Health Professor Leana Wen told The Hill, although the trends are going down, some states are still battling the delta variant.
"I'm very concerned about people becoming complacent because they think that the delta wave is passing us," Wen said. "We have seen this happen before, where there is a rise in the number of cases, then a decline, and then people let down their guard. And as a result, we plateau at a very high level of cases. That's unacceptable."
According to the CDC, 78% of the adult population in the United States have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson.
The agency is reporting the seven-day rolling average of new cases has dropped 11.6% compared to last week from 107,953 cases to 95,448 this week.
The delta variant is currently the only "Variant of Concern" for the agency, and it will be the dominant variant circulating in all 10 of the U.S. Department of Health and Human services regions.
The CDC defines a "Variant of Concern" as "a variant for which there is evidence of an increase in transmissibility or more severe disease [e.g., increased hospitalizations or deaths]."
Variants of Concern require one or more public health actions, which include notifying the World Health organization, reporting to the CDC, local or regional actions to control the spread and increase testing, as well as researching treatments for the strain, according to the CDC.
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