For Walensky, one of the key signs the United States is exiting the pandemic will be when hospitals are no longer filled to the brim with COVID-19 patients. And when the number of daily deaths starts to plummet.

“We’ve gotten pretty cavalier about 1,100 deaths a day,” Walensky told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton in a rare in-person interview from CDC headquarters in Atlanta…

Despite the grim daily death count, Walensky said she believes that one day we’ll leave behind one of the key symbols of the pandemic: the face mask.

“Masks are for now, they’re not forever,” Walensky said. “We have to find a way to be done with them.”

And the best way to put the pandemic — and masks — in the rearview mirror is to “lean in” to the current strategies we know work, Walensky said.