Fauci warns U.S. must 'hunker down' for a fall and winter that won't 'be easy'

The nation's top infectious disease expert is warning that Americans will need to "hunker down" for a difficult fall and winter.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke this week on a panel with Harvard Medical School doctors, during which he made his warning about the coming months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it's not going to be easy," Fauci said, per CNN.

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He went on to observe that "every time" restrictions are lifted during the coronavirus crisis, "we get a blip," adding, "it's whack-a-mole."

This warning from Fauci comes as the United States reports an average of around 36,000 new COVID-19 cases a day, CNN notes. Previously, when the number of daily cases was around 50,000 or more, Fauci stressed the need to get this down to 10,000 by September.

"If we don't get them down," Fauci said in August, "then we're going to have a really bad situation in the fall."

With the United States' daily coronavirus cases having not declined as much as Fauci had hoped they would by now, he said this week, "I keep looking at that curve and I get more depressed and more depressed about the fact that we never really get down to the baseline that I'd like." Brendan Morrow