Fauci says US not headed back to lockdown

— The United States is unlikely to be sent back into lockdown despite a surge in COVID-19 cases stemming from the Delta variant, top U.S. scientist Anthony Fauci said Sunday.

America is in for “some pain and suffering in the future” but enough people have now been vaccinated to prevent a repeat of last winter’s deadly surge, the infectious disease expert who advises President Joe Biden told ABC’s “This Week.”

“I don’t think we’re going to see lockdowns,” Fauci said, after Biden this week said the United States was probably headed for new restrictions because of the Delta variant surge.

Elsewhere in the world countries including China and Australia have in fact put some of their people back under lockdown as the highly contagious variant spreads, not long after it seemed life was beginning to return to normal.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course this week and said fully vaccinated people should mask up again indoors in higher-risk areas of the country.

The top U.S. health authority says the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and — critically — that breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals, though still rare, may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases.

This change in mask policy, after Biden had predicted a “summer of freedom” if enough Americans got a shot, has caused worries that confidence in coronavirus vaccines would be undermined.

Fauci tempered this on Sunday by reiterating that people who are vaccinated run a very low risk of infection, and even lower of hospitalization or death if they do get sick.