COVID-19 Fifth Wave Possible As 66 Million Americans Remain Unvaccinated, Fauci Warns

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned about a possible fifth wave of COVID-19 cases as more than 60 million Americans remain unvaccinated.

COVID-19 infections in the country have gone down by 23%, with hospitalizations and deaths also declining by 17% in recent weeks. However, unvaccinated individuals could pose a threat to the country’s progress against the virus and cause a resurgence of infections, according to Fauci.

“The problem is, as we all know, we still have approximately 66 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated,” Fauci said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The degree to which we continue to come down in that slope will depend on how well we do about getting more people vaccinated.”

Dr. Fauci explained that the fifth wave of COVID-19 can be preventable if more Americans get vaccinated against the virus. He said there's "less likelihood" another wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths will happen in the winter if more people decide to get inoculated.

As of Sunday, only 57% of the total population in the United States has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and only 65.9% of the total population has received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. has administered 408,265,959 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Sunday morning. The tally includes the two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech and the single-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.

COVID-19 cases in the country remain high although the number has decreased significantly over the past weeks. The rolling daily average number of cases is at 83,703 as of Saturday. In comparison, the U.S. had a daily average of 160,000 infections at the beginning of September, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

COVID-19 deaths have also gone down an average of more than 200 a day since the beginning of October, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

As of Sunday, the U.S. has recorded 44,933,329 COVID-19 infections and 724,317 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.