“So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are. What we hope to do, I don’t believe — and I have spoken about this widely — we’re not going to eradicate this virus,” he said, adding that people may need to be “intermittently” vaccinated.

“I don’t know how often that would have to be, Judy,” Fauci said.

“That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low. But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country. Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world, infection that spreads rapidly among people.” he said, adding that the global situation shows that the pandemic is “still ongoing.”