COVID-19: Dr. Fauci: 'We’ve got to be careful we don’t get complacent'

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden gives an update on the COVID-19 pandemic and delivers a warning on why we can’t get complacent about the virus.

Video transcript

ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, right now, we've seen a disparate surging in this country. We've seen it surge in the big cities like New York and Chicago, Los Angeles, places like that. And even in New York, it's already peaked and started coming down. The areas in the south that have not yet been hit as badly likely will see a gradual increase and will reach their peak later than the peaks that we're seeing in the big cities like New York.

So I think ultimately, it's going to spread throughout the entire country for the simple reason it's a very, very transmissible virus. One of the reasons why we can't be complacent about the concept that it is inherently less severe is that the sheer volume of numbers of people that are getting infected with omicron because of its high degree of transmissibility might supersede and obviate the lesser degree of severity.