Covid: Dr Fauci says US won't return to normal until mid to late summer next year
Dr Anthony Fauci has told ITV News he does not believe life in America will return to normal until the middle or end of summer 2021.
The US's leading expert on infectious disease said while he believes progress will be made to help open up to the US economy by March, he believes more time is needed for life to return to its pre-pandemic way.
Speaking to ITV News's Tom Bradby, Dr Fauci said: "By the time we get to vaccinating the general public, as it were, that likely will not be until the end of March or beginning of April.
"At that point, given the number of people in the US, over 330 million, it's likely it will take a few months before you get 70-85% of the people vaccinated. I believe that will not be until mid to end of the summer of 2021.
"Hopefully, when we get into the third-quarter, namely the fall of 2021, that's when I believe we'll start looking like we're getting to close to what we would consider normal."
He added: "It's going to be a gradual process. It's not going to be like turning a light switch on and off... It's going to be a gradual easing into normality.
"For example, by the time we get to March and April, we will have enough of the vulnerable people vaccinated so that we can start to do things a bit differently. I think the restrictions will be less and less.
"The economy will start to open up... When you say normal, I'm talking about the fall where you won't feel uncomfortable in going to a theatre or going to a restaurant at normal capacity, or watch an athletic event."
Dr Fauci has previously been accurate in his predictions, in September he told ITV News he was "cautiously optimistic" we will have a vaccine by Christmas and at the beginning of December the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was approved by the UK regulator.
He heaped praise on the vaccine producers who are helping to gradually limit the spread of coronavirus, and said he hoped they would work on the new mutant strain of Covid-19 found in the UK.
He added: "I think we need to find that out. Its a testable hypothesis. What you do is you get the virus itself and then you get serum containing antibodies from people who have been vaccinated.
"Then you determine whether the antibodies neutralise that mutant virus. If they still do, then this mutant does not hurt the efficacy of the virus."
The US has been the hardest-hit country by the pandemic, with more than 320,000 deaths and 18.3 million confirmed cases.