Washington, October 10 (RHC)-- COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations will not go down in the winter, top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci suggests.  Dr. Fauci made the comments in an interview with American commentator Greta Van Susteren, set to be aired on Sunday.

“Fortunately, right now, over the last few weeks, we've seen a turnaround in the slope in going down in both cases and hospitalizations.  Deaths are still up, but it's really flattening, so it's a lagging indicator,” Fauci said.

Some 56 percent of the country’s total population have been fully vaccinated and the official number of cases are supposedly trending downward.

“I strongly suspect that you're going to start seeing the deaths go down similar to the hospitalizations; how quickly they go down and how thoroughly they go down is going to depend a lot on a number of circumstances, which will be influenced by things like the colder weather, people doing things indoors, how well they go by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines of, when you have a lot of infection in the community, even though you're vaccinated, when you are not home but outside congregate settings in the public, wearing masks, I think would be very prudent,” he added.

More than 713 thousand people have so far died due to the coronavirus out of the over 44 million cases reported.  Some 140,000 children in the U.S. have also lost a parent or a grandparent caregiver to the virus, according to a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics.

"This means that for every four COVID-19 deaths, one child was left behind without a mother, father and/or a grandparent who provided for that child's home needs and nurture — needs such as love, security and daily care," said Susan Hillis, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead author of the new study.  "This number will continue to grow as long as our pandemic deaths increase.”

The death of parents or caregivers is essentially hitting the people of color harder.  "Sixty-five percent of all children experiencing Covid-associated orphanhood or death of their primary caregiver are of racial and ethnic minority," said Hillis.  "That is such an extreme disparity."