Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he agrees with the statement made by President-elect that the darkest days for the coronavirus still may lay ahead of the United States, particularly with a potential post-holiday spike in cases.

Interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci said “And the reason I’m concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s, surge, and, as I have described it, as a surge upon a surge, because, if you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we have experienced as we have gone into the late fall and soon-to-be-early winter, it is really quite troubling.

“We are really at a very critical point. … So I share the concern of President-elect Biden that as we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

Fauci also said he urges lame duck president Donald Trump to get one of the newly-approved coronavirus vaccines.  “The decision of whether he gets vaccinated is up to him and to the White House physician who is a person I know is a very competent physician,” Fauci said. “My recommendation, and I’ve said this before, is that I would get him vaccinated. He is still the President of the United States. A critical person.”