Dr. Fauci, the government's foremost infectious diseases expert, has predicted that the United States could have millions of cases of COVID-19 and experience over 100,000 fatalities from the pandemic.
The doctor made this revelation during an interview with CNN's State of the Union on Sunday morning.
Listen to Dr. Fauci make the production below:"I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases," he said, before correcting himself to say that he meant deaths. "We're going to have millions of cases."
However, he added, "I don't want to be held to that" because the pandemic is "such a moving target."
The US currently has the most confirmed cases of COVID-19, having overtaken China where the pandemic began. Per John Hopkins University, there have been a total of 124,763 at the time of writing.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus response coordinator, said that no area of the US will be spared from the pandemic on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning, per the Daily Mail.
"Every metro area should assume that they will have an outbreak equivalent to New York," Birx said.
She explained that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to equip hospitals with what they need to save lives.
"Hospitals are so busy taking care of the people who are ill, they can't be spending time doing inventory," Birx said. "We need to help and support that."
"The sooner we react and the sooner the states and the metro areas react and ensure that they have put in full mitigation ... then we'll be able to move forward," she added.
Dr. John Brooks, head of the Disease Control and Prevention Epidemiology Research Team, said that the US has not seen the worst effects of the virus yet. Per the Daily Mail, it is currently "in the acceleration phase" and therefore the entire country is at risk.
"There is no geographic part of the United States that is spared from this," he said.
John Hopkins University reports that there have been a total of 684,652 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally and 32,113 deaths.