After two years and nearly a million deaths, America is finally past the COVID-19 pandemic, says Anthony Fauci. President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser told PBS’s Newshour on Tuesday that the country was no longer seeing “tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths.” He said: “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.” But Fauci warned that the coronavirus is not going to go away and people will still need to get vaccinated “intermittently.” Fauci was speaking as mask requirements are being lifted around the country after a Trump-appointed judge in Florida struck down a federal mask mandate.