National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the new BA.2 variant of COVID will cause an “uptick” of cases which might cause a return to requirements for wearing masks indoors.

Fauci said, “Obviously, there is concern that we are seeing an uptick in cases, as I mentioned over the last couple of weeks, that this is not unexpected, that you’re going to see an uptick when you pull back on the mitigation methods. If you look at the CDC calculation with their new metrics, it’s clear that most of the country, even though we’re seeing an uptick, is still in that green zone, which means that masking is not recommended in the sense of not required on indoor settings.”