Fauci: Americans who are fully vaccinated can enjoy the holiday season with their family

• Dr. Anthony Fauci said fully vaccinated Americans can "enjoy" the upcoming holiday season.
• "If you're vaccinated and your family members are vaccinated...you can enjoy the holidays," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, says that fully vaccinated individuals can enjoy the upcoming holiday season.

"If you're vaccinated and your family members are vaccinated...you can enjoy the holidays. You can enjoy Halloween, trick-or-treating, and certainly Thanksgiving with your family and Christmas with your family," Fauci said on ABC News' "This Week."

His comments come after he said "it's too soon to tell" if holiday gatherings were safe, noting that the focus should be on lowering COVD-19 infections earlier this month.

But, in the interview on Sunday, he emphasized that being vaccinated for the holidays could help keep cases down.

"That's one of the reasons why we emphasize why it's so important to get vaccinated not only for your own safety, for that of your family, but also for the good of the community to keep the level of infection down," the White House chief medical adviser added. "When you do that there's no reason at all why you can't enjoy the holidays...the way we've traditionally done it all along."

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidance with recommendations on how to safely celebrate the holidays. According to the agency, wearing a mask indoors in areas with higher infection rates, avoiding crowded places, and staying home if you are ill are ways to help curb the spread of the virus.

Earlier this week, Fauci said that deaths and hospitalizations in the country are declining, but we have "to do better," according to the Washington Post. Data from the CDC shows that 56.9% of Americans are fully vaccinated.