Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins the Live show to discuss the surge in China’s daily COVID-19 cases as well as Dr. Fauci’s take on assessing COVID-19 in the U.S.

Video Transcript

EMILY MCCORMICK: China is grappling with its biggest COVID-19 outbreak in two years, as Shanghai goes into lockdown and new restrictions hit the southern city of Guangzhou. Yahoo Finance's own Anjalee Khemlani is here with more. Anjalee, tell us about how China got to this point and how this jump in cases now is being addressed.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right, so as you mentioned, we got a new area now in sort of a restricted-- putting on more restrictions, though not in lockdown, and that's Guangzhou with the schools now moving online. That's the first step that Shanghai had also previously taken, even though it remains in lockdown right now. Seeing cases surge more than 25,000-- 26,000 per day is what they're reporting. And that's really a spike and specifically focuses on what the concerns are globally, as we see this new Omicron variant sort of take hold.

And so what's going on over there is important to watch because China's situation is that they have a low vaccination in the older population, and that's really what's being the large majority of cases is what's going on there right now. They are seeing a large amount of asymptomatic cases, and that plays an important role in understanding how this is spreading and what we need to look out for and how to respond to that as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Anjalee, we got a new, I would say, weekend warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Take a listen.

ANTHONY FAUCI: There will be a level of infection. This is not going to be eradicated, and it's not going to be eliminated. And what's going to happen is that we're going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and going to functions. Even within the realm of a green zone map of the country, where you see everything looks green, but it's starting to tick up.

BRIAN SOZZI: Anjalee, is there a new wave coming here to the US?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: The short answer is yes. So we are expecting a wave in the coming weeks. We've already seen an uptick in the Northeast and the implications of that. We've seen a slight uptick in cases overall for the daily average across the country and a slight uptick in deaths as well. So what's going on is we might see this surge, but what the bigger, broader implications are for the rest of the country still remains to be seen.

Is this going to be a big wave like we've seen in the past, or is it going to be a smaller one? The likely scenario is that it might be a smaller one for now. And then later on in the year, in the fall, is when we're going to see a larger wave and we are more vulnerable to a wave, because by then, anybody getting a booster or anybody who's getting vaccinated by now will see waning immunity of those vaccines. So-- or anyone who has recently been infected, right, with that last wave. That also-- that immunity is also going to wane.

So that's what experts are focusing on when they say that another wave is guaranteed. And the important point to remember is, as we're seeing in China, right, with the asymptomatic cases being a large portion of the cases we've seen, we know that there has been spread and super spreader events recently here in the US as well.

All of that put together really sets the tone for understanding individual risk and what your sort of response should be, whether or not you're indoors, outdoors, and how to manage that. That's sort of where things are for the US. There doesn't seem to be any sort of appetite for larger mandates or restrictions as it stands right now, but of course, that could change. It's just a wait and see for right now to see how this wave hits us currently.