A FUNCTION OF THE UNVACCINATED:

DER SPIEGEL: The new variant which is even more transmissible than Delta.

Fauci: Yes, it's extraordinary. But we're starting to see in studies from South Africa, from the United Kingdom and in some recent studies from the United States that the severity of the disease is considerably less with Omicron. That's the good news. In the United States the overwhelming proportion of hospitalizations and deaths are among unvaccinated people or vaccinated who have profound immune deficiencies. The sobering news is that so many people get infected that the sheer volume of cases, even if only a smaller percentage get seriously ill, might be really very challenging to the health care systems.

DER SPIEGEL: You said this week that nearly everybody will become infected with Omicron. Are we now witnessing the last steps toward the virus becoming endemic?

Fauci: Well, you can only make an educated guess. I think we're seeing the evolution into a much more prevalent but less severe infection. At least we hope for this, but there's no guarantee. To get to where we all want to be, which is a level of control so that people will get infected but they'll get a common cold and won't get seriously ill, many people will either have to be vaccinated or have already been infected and recovered, together with an occasional boost. When this is the case, as we go into the next year, we'll start to see cases coming down and hospitalizations going way down. Once we get there, we may be able to look upon this as another respiratory illness that for most of the population is not a problem. I hope we're going in that direction. I think we are, but we can't make the mistake of saying, "Oh, this is less severe, we are done with it." We might be done with it, but there's no guarantee that we are.

DER SPIEGEL: Will there be other variants after Omicron?

Fauci: Given the fact that there are so many countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, where the rate of vaccination is still very low, you are going to see continuing smoldering of infection. By this we give the virus the opportunity to mutate, and it is conceivable that the next variant will have a high degree of transmissibility but also a high degree of severity.

"2022 may be the year that the pandemic enters an endemic phase, but it really depends on what happens and the decisions that are made across the world," Afeyan said in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday with Francine Lacqua. Although omicron is highly transmissible,"on the other hand it's having a lesser effect in terms of seriousness of disease," he said.

For now, the world remains in the pandemic's grasp, Afeyan wrote in a letter published this week on the website of Flagship Pioneering, the venture-capital firm he leads. Afeyan said he was among the millions of people who contracted the omicron variant going into the holiday season. 

Moderna's omicron-specific booster shot could enter into human trials within weeks, Afeyan said Friday, reiterating comments Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel made earlier this week. The CEO said he expected another booster would be needed in the fall, and it is likely to contain a component tailored to omicron.

"We will be ready with our testing starting in weeks," Afeyan said Friday. "Whether we need a booster rather in the spring than the fall is something that we're going to have to work with officials all around the world to sort out."

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