CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: U.S. Could Have ‘Functional Herd Immunity’ Over the Spring and Summer

The leading medical voice on cable news has an optimistic prediction about the course of the pandemic — but not without caveats.

Appearing on CNN’s New Day Friday, Dr. Sanjay Gupta delivered a mostly rosy forecast about the next few months of the outbreak, with the pace of vaccinations rapidly picking up across the country.

“We’ll probably get to the point — is my guess — over the spring and summer, where the transmission rates come down so low that we’ll have some sort of functional herd immunity, and may see some relaxing of the guidelines,” Gupta said.

The good news did come with a word of warning from CNN’s chief medical correspondent.

“I don’t know that it’s going to be linear,” Gupta said, regarding the prospect of herd immunity. “Meaning that, when we go back into the winter of next year, they may say — at least for a period of time — limit indoor gatherings, wear masks again, things like that. We may have this toggling for a little bit of time.”

Watch above, via CNN.