WATCH: Fauci struggles to explain why COVID cases are dropping in Texas

In particular, Fauci was asked about the situation in Texas, where cases of coronavirus have dropped dramatically since late January despite the state ignoring many public health guidelines he had endorsed.

"It can be confusing because you may see a lag and a delay because often, you have to wait a few weeks before you see the effect of what you're doing right now," Fauci said. "You know, there are a lot of things that go into that.

"When you say that they've had a lot of activity on the outside like ball games, I'm not really quite sure, it could be they're doing things outdoors, it's very difficult to just one-on-one compare that."

While Fauci said that he hopes "they continue to tick down," but noted that "there's always the concern, when you pull back on methods, particularly things like indoor dining and bars that are crowded, you can see a delay and all of a sudden tick right back up.

"We've been fooled before by situations where people begin to open up, nothing happens, and then all of a sudden several weeks later, things start exploding on you."

Nearly 13 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in Texas, which may also be playing a role in the collapse in case numbers.

"The other wild card in this Joe is that even though everybody has COVID-19 fatigue and wants to get back to normality... We don't want to declare victory prematurely because we have a virus out there now, this variant, that spreads really quite efficiently, and if you pull back on masking and avoiding congregate setting, you're really taking a pretty big risk," Fauci said.

"If we can just hang in there a bit longer, because every day that we hang in there and not just give in to getting away from all restrictions, every day we do better and better."