Fauci says we're out of 'the pandemic phase' but might need to get vaccinated 'every year'

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a needle jabbing a human arm — forever.

White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday in an interview with PBS NewsHour that the United States is no longer in "the pandemic phase" of the COVID-19 virus but that Americans might need to be vaccinated "every year" in order to keep virus levels low.

"We are, certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase. Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now," Fauci said.

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According to The New York Times, the U.S. is recording around 50,000 new COVID cases per day, down from a high of more than 800,000 during January's Omicron spike.

The seven-day average of deaths stands at 362 per day, down 32 percent over the past two weeks, while the number of cases — driven by the spread of the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant — is up 61 percent.