Americans have made it through the worst of the Omicron wave, though this apparently is not reason enough for masks mandates to be removed from schools, Dr. Fauci said.

Fauci said that it was “understandable” to want kids to not wear masks, but that it was just not the time to do that.

“It’s understandable why people want to take masks off the kids. But, right now, given the level of activity that we have, it is risky,” Fauci said on CNN on Thursday.

Fauci said that while America could get lucky, but that kids taking off masks would be a reason for extreme caution.

“Now we could get lucky, cause the trajectory right now is going way down and it very well may be that if you take masks off of kids in the next week or so, it’s going to keep going down. But you have to be careful,” Fauci said.

Mask mandates as of late have had renewed interests, after pushes from parents to drop the mandates. Several states have dropped their mandates, including Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Nevada, and Oregon.

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New York and California are two notable states that still have a mandate in place.

COVID cases have dropped dramatically in recent weeks, with a 42 percent drop in cases. The US is averaging 128,000 cases per day.

“There is no perfect solution to this,” said Fauci to CNN. “The fact that the world and the United States and particularly certain parts of the United States are just up to here with COVID – they just really need to somehow get their life back,” he said.

“You don’t want to be reckless and throw everything aside, but you’ve got to start inching towards that,” Fauci said.

Fauci acknowledged the serious impacts that masking has had on schools, saying:

“Is the impact on mental health, is the impact on the development of kids, is the impact on schools – is that balanced against trying to be totally pristine and protecting against infection? I don’t have the right answer to that.”