Fauci notes COVID-19 progress but warns more surges are possible

Dr. Anthony Fauci noted the U.S. is making COVID-19 progress but warned that more surges are possible on ABC News' "This Week."

As the U.S. sees its first notable decline in COVID-19 metrics in more than three months, with coronavirus-related hospital admissions and average daily new cases dropping by more than 30% over the last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the country is making progress against the current surge, but warned we're not out of the woods yet during an interview on ABC's "This Week."

"We certainly are turning the corner on this particular surge, Jon," the nation's top infectious disease expert told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday. "But we have experienced over now close to 20 months surges that go up and then come down, and then go back up again. The way to keep it down, to make that turnaround continue to go down, is to do what we mentioned: Get people vaccinated."

"When you have 70 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not yet vaccinated, that's the danger zone right there," he added. "So it's within our capability to make sure that that turnaround that we’re seeing -- that very favorable and optimistic turnaround -- continues to go down and doesn't do what we've seen multiple times before, where it goes down and then it comes back up."

Despite the positive signs, the U.S. also marked a grim milestone this week in the pandemic, surpassing 700,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.