President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci on Sunday said he does not expect the United States will return to lockdowns, despite the growing risks of COVID-19 infections posed by the Delta variant.
"I don't think we're going to see lockdowns," Fauci, who is also director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on ABC's "This Week."
"I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country - not enough to crush the outbreak - but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter."
Although Fauci does not think the United States will need to shut down again as it did last year, he warned on ABC that "things are going to get worse" as the Delta variant continues to spread.
"We have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated," he said.
The average number of new cases reported each day has nearly doubled in the past 10 days and the number of hospitalised patients in many states is surging, according to a Reuters analysis.