Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, told the Davos Agenda virtual event Monday that "natural vaccination" - or immunity through previous infection - might not be as effective as some think.
Like the emergence of Omicron, a new variant can emerge in the future that can ignore the natural immunity provided by infection from the new strain.
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He explained that even if Omicron, which has generated a massive surge in new cases worldwide, though is not as severe or deadly as its predecessors, is the last strain of COVID it will probably become endemic.
His warning runs counter to the positive predictions coming from some officials in the U.K. who think that the virus could have a "flu-type" relationship with people by the end of the year based on its present spread.
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"I would hope that that's the case. But that would only be the case if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior variant," Fauci announced.
Fauci has beforehand made grim projections about new Covid variants, and was even correct regarding a variant like Omicron emerging.
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In August, when the Delta variant was first growing in the U.S., Fauci cautioned that with the transmission of COVID so rampant, it was likely that a vaccine-resistant variant would ultimately emerge.
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Months later, the variant did emerge, when South African health officials found the extremely infectious Omicron variant in late November.
He worries that there is a possibility another variant emerges that has mutated in a way that enables it to get around protection provided by recovering from Omicron.
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COVID becoming endemic due to Omicron has become a common theory among health specialists and officials and has served as a beacon of hope for the population suffering through the last surge.
Omicron is burning through people so quickly, causing daily COVID cases to hit records almost everywhere in the world, that it could soon run out of people to infect.
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The U.S.'s daily case average surpassed 800,000 for the first time over the weekend, with the height of the Omicron surge now reaching four times as many cases as the peak of the Delta wave.
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Disparities in case figures have not translated into more deaths, though, with the 1,839 deaths recorded every day in America - the most since early October - is far below the 3,200 deaths per day averaged at the peak of the Delta surge in late September.
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