Anne Sophie Kristiansen
- Denmark lifted all COVID-19 restrictions, making it one of the first EU countries to do so, the AP reported.
- The country boasts an 80% vaccination rate, which is the driving force behind this choice.
- Meanwhile, cases in the US are 16 times too high to end the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
After 548 days, Denmark has officially lifted all of its COVID-19 restrictions Friday, The Associated Press reported.
The country boasts an 80% vaccination rate among people over the age of 12 – the driving force behind this decision, according to the AP.
The last remaining restriction required all citizens to show a digital pass to enter nightclubs. That rule was lifted Friday.
This change makes Denmark one of the first countries in the EU to declare itself ahead of the pandemic.
"I wouldn't say it is too early. We have opened the door but we have also said that we can close it if needed," Soeren Riis Paludan, a professor of virology with the Aarhus University in Denmark's second largest city, told the AP.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the US case rate is currently 16 times too high to end the pandemic, The Hill reported.
"The endgame is to suppress the virus. Right now, we're still in pandemic mode, because we have 160,000 new infections a day. That's not even modestly good control ... which means it's a public health threat," Fauci told Axios.
He added that to feel comfortable ending the pandemic, we have to be seeing fewer than 10,000 cases per day in the US.
Fauci pointed to vaccines, once again, as the country's way out.
"You'll still get some people getting infected, but you're not going to have it as a public health threat," he said.
That's why President Joe Biden unveiled his plan on Thursday to get more Americans vaccinated by implementing mandates and increasing testing.