US on 'threshold' of living with coronavirus: Fauci

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci said personal attacks by Senator Rand Paul distracted from the important work of tackling the pandemic, and made him a personal target for violence

Despite soaring cases and record-high Covid-19 hospitalizations, the United States is approaching the "threshold" of transitioning to living with the coronavirus as a manageable disease, Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.

Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the top US scientist said eliminating Covid was unrealistic and that "Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody."

Those up to date with their vaccines remain well protected against severe outcomes, but vaccine efficacy against infection has fallen.

"When we get there, there's that transition, and we may be on the threshold of that right now," he said, while also stressing that with the country currently recording almost a million infections a day, nearly 150,000 people in hospital and more than 1,200 daily deaths, "we're not at that point."

Earlier, the 81-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases slammed vaccine skeptic Republican Senator Rand Paul for unleashing "crazies" who were threatening his life and harassing his family, in unusually emotional congressional testimony.

While many fellow lawmakers focused their questions on the lack of adequate testing and confusing new guidelines on how infected people should end their isolation, Paul, who has railed against vaccine mandates and refused to get vaccinated, said Fauci was personally to blame for people's deaths.

- 'Kindles the crazies' -

"All of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there and I have life threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls."

The man said he wanted to kill Fauci, because of what he said was blood on the scientists' hands. 

Though Omicron causes severe cases at a lower rate than Delta, it is reaching more people because of its extreme infectiousness.

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