National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci said on Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week” that it could be up to a “few months” before life in the United States gets back to normal to stop the community spread in the coronavirus outbreak.

Host Jonathan Karl asked, “I know you don’t have precise numbers. Can you try to help us understand when will life get back to normal, how long does this last in.”

Fauci said, “You know, it’s going to be a matter of, you know, several weeks to a few months for sure. If you look at the dynamics of how outbreak curves go, you just need to take a look at China and South Korea right now. With China, they went to their peak, and they’re coming down right now. Just a day or so ago, 11 new cases in China, which is minuscule to where it was. If you look at that bracket, all of that was a couple of months, a month and a half for China and about the same. Although you can’t predict accurately the way you interfere with that and not only diminish the peak of the curve, but even perhaps the duration depends on the effectiveness in which you do the kind of things of controls you’ve been talking about, he containment and the mitigation.”

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