Dr. Fauci: 'As a society, just forget about shaking hands'

As Americans prepare for our "new normal" post coronavirus outbreak, the nation's top infectious disease doctor said shaking hands is a practice that shouldn't return.

If, by fall, things start to return to normal, Americans will still need to wash their hands frequently, sick schoolchildren should be kept home and people with fevers need to refrain from going to work, Fauci said during an online interview Wednesday with the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

People also should never shake hands again, Fauci said.

“As a society, just forget about shaking hands, we don’t need to shake hands,” the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease said at the White House briefing Wednesday. “We’ve gotta break that custom, because as a matter of fact, that is really one of the major ways you can transmit a respiratory-borne illness.”

“I mean it sounds crazy, but that’s the way it’s really got to be,” he said. “Until we get to a point where we know the population is protected” with a vaccine.