Dr Fauci says the US is still in the first wave of Covid

‘There's no appetite whatsoever in this country for shutting down in any strict way, but there are certain public health measures that you could implement’

Dr Anthony Fauci says the US is still in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic as new cases surge to record levels and the country's death toll passes 225,000.

The White House's top infectious disease expert said that the recent increase in daily cases across the US couldn't be considered a second or third wave since the first wave was never effectively passed.

“I look at it more as an elongated — and an exacerbation of — the original first wave,” Mr Fauci said during Yahoo! Finance's All Markets Summit.

He said the country never reduced its nationwide baseline of new cases to below 10,000 per day before some states began reopening, bringing the peak between 30,000 to 70,000 per day. Heading into the fall, cases have increased again to 80,000 per day.

“Now as we're getting into the cold weather, we came back up again to the worst that we've ever had, which was over 80,000 per day,” Mr Fauci explained.

"If you look at the chart, we’ve never really had waves, in the sense of up and then down to a good baseline. It’s been up and wavering up and down till now, we are at the highest baseline we’ve ever been, which is really quite precarious."

New cases reached about 84,000 on Friday and again on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said focusing on whether it was one wave or another was just semantics that didn't change their priority to prevent serious cases as the country reopens.

"You want to call it the third wave, or an extended first wave, no matter how you look at it it's not good news," he said.

It is the second interview in recent days that Mr Fauci has pointed to the country going in the wrong direction to stop the spread while conceding that there was not widespread support for more strict lockdowns.

He said the US was not "rounding the corner", as was suggested by Donald Trump during the final presidential debate with Joe Biden.

"If you just look at the numbers, I mean you can have opinions about what's going on but the data speak for themselves," Mr Fauci told BBC on Friday.

"We don't want to shut down again, there's no appetite whatsoever in this country for shutting down in any strict way, but there are certain public health measures that you could implement that would go a long way to turning around these increases that we're seeing."