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It's too soon to say whether the pandemic has eased enough for families to gather for Christmas this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday. Fauci, making the Sunday talk show rounds, said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that  Americans first need to focus on lowering the number of new infections and hospitalizations. The best way to do that: Vaccination and booster shots, he said. "We've just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we're going to do at a particular time," Fauci said. "Let's focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down." (Bacon and Santucci, 10/3)

Dr. Anthony Fauci was under fire on Sunday for suggesting Americans might have to spend Christmas alone in 2021. On CBS’s "Face The Nation," Fauci spoke with anchor Margaret Brennan about the status of the coronavirus pandemic and what is expected in the months to come. Specifically, Brennan wondered if families can gather for Christmas. "We can gather for Christmas, or it’s just too soon to tell?" Brennan asked. Fauci responded it was "too soon to tell" if people could gather in groups by Christmas this year. "It is just too soon to tell," Fauci said. "We have to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at a particular time." (Kornick, 10/3)

Trick-or-treating is back this year. Sort of. The Center for Disease Control has given a green light for children nationwide to trick or treat this Halloween – one year after the CDC advised against the tradition last year due to COVID-19 concerns, instead suggesting one-way trick-or-treating as an alternative. Coronavirus cases are decreasing in the U.S. – 13% the last week of September – but community transmission remains high amid the delta variant, according to the CDC. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told CBS News. "I wouldn't necessarily go to a crowded Halloween party, but I think we should be able to let our kids go trick-or-treating in small groups." (Gleeson, 10/2)

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’s worried that people resisting COVID-19 vaccine shots based on religious grounds may be confusing that with a philosophical objection. Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, says getting the COVID-19 vaccine is no different in concept than receiving other vaccines such as for measles, which have been done for many years. He says a public health review found “very, very few, literally less than a handful” of established religions which actually oppose vaccinations. (10/3)

Dr. Anthony Fauci praised Sunday the results of a late-stage clinical trial of an experimental antiviral drug from Merck that public health experts hope could open a new front in the United States’ pandemic response. “It’s extremely important,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told CNN’s “State of the Union” — emphasizing that the drug, molnupiravir, can be taken by mouth as a pill. (Forgey, 10/3)

As the nation’s death toll climbed above 700,000 in October, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, an adviser on the pandemic to President Biden, emphasized the need for the 70 million Americans who are eligible for a vaccine to get immunized during interviews on Sunday morning talk shows. “Many of those deaths were unavoidable but many, many are avoidable, were avoidable and will in the future be avoidable,” Dr. Fauci, who is also director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” (Abelson, 10/4)

Trump administration officials fought over whether — and ultimately declined — to fund the same antiviral drug that Merck announced yesterday significantly reduces hospitalizations and deaths among coronavirus patients. The Trump administration's decision almost certainly delayed the development of the drug. Having an effective antiviral pill during the Delta wave could have substantially reduced its death toll. (Owens, 10/1)