Dr. Anthony Fauci, the goverment’s top expert on infectious diseases, said Thursday that no country has been harder hit by the coronavirus than the United States.
“America has been the worst-hit country in the world, with 8.1 million cases and over 218,000 deaths,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
As of Thursday, the U.S. has over 8.9 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 228,602 confirmed deaths.
Fauci made his remarks at the West Virginia University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
“I feel cautiously optimistic we will have a safe vaccine, even though you can never be certain when it comes to vaccinology,” Fauci added. He also said that 40% of people with the virus are asymptomatic.
On Wednesday, during an interview with National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Fauci suggested that the U.S. will not return to normal until 2022.
“There will be a graded, gradual progression toward normalcy” in 2022, he said.
