So far, less than 2% of Americans have received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fauci said he was hopeful that the country could reach this high level of vaccination from late summer to early autumn.
“That said,” he added, “there is an absolute ‘but’ in that. And the ‘but’ is that we have to deal with variants.”
The best thing Americans can do now, said Fauci, is to prevent the virus from spreading further and mutating.
“The only way for a virus to mutate (is) if it can replicate. So if you vaccinate people and double public health measures and keep the level of viral dynamics low, we will not have an easy evolution towards mutations,” he said. “This is something that people really need to understand.”
“The way to stop these mutations: get vaccinated and follow public health measures,” added Fauci.
Study: Younger adults are the biggest spreaders of the virus in the USA
His comments were made while a group of researchers reported on Tuesday that the biggest disseminators of Covid-19 in the United States are adults aged 20 to 49 – and efforts to control the spread, including vaccines, should probably focus on that range. age.
The Imperial College London team of researchers used cell phone location data covering more than 10 million people and publicly available information on the spread of the virus to calculate which age groups were most responsible.
They estimated that people aged 35 to 49 were responsible for 41% of new transmissions by mid-August, and adults aged 20 to 34 were responsible for another 35%. Children and adolescents accounted for only 6% of the spread. while people aged 50 to 64 account for 15% of transmission.
Experts have already warned that the outbreaks were largely driven by younger groups, Fauci said, but that does not mean that these groups should get the vaccine “at the expense of vaccinating the elderly who have the underlying conditions”.
“You don’t want to deprive them to get the youngest, because they are the ones who will end up in the hospital and have a higher mortality rate,” said Fauci.
States will see an increase in vaccine supply
Hoping to slow the pandemic as quickly as possible, states have been pushing for more supplies and increasing their capabilities to get more gunshots faster.
“Our challenge is supply, supply, supply,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said in a statement on Tuesday. “Remember, we are going to take a vaccine for everyone, it will only take some time.”
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the increase would allow the state to provide about 20% more doses of the vaccine to local governments in the coming weeks, meaning that they can choose to expand the guidelines on who is eligible for an injection.
“We have state priorities set by the federal government, but if a local government is now getting more (doses) and they believe in their local circumstances, they want to prioritize taxi drivers, Uber drivers because they think this has been a problem, or deficiencies development workers in facilities or restaurants, they have that flexibility, “Cuomo said at a news conference on Tuesday.
New York City officials said on Tuesday that people who had their appointments canceled due to the weather will be contacted individually for rescheduling, noting that the city is committed to not making further appointments until all of these people are served.
Pharmacies are preparing to start vaccination
“Millions of Americans turn to local pharmacies every day for drugs, flu shots and more. And pharmacies are easily accessible in most communities, with most Americans living less than five miles from a pharmacy,” White House response coordinator Covid-19 Jeff Zients said.
CVS said it will start vaccinations next week as part of the federal program. The 11 states where the pharmacy chain will start vaccinating are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York (not including New York City), Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Vaccination appointments can be scheduled as early as February 9 at the CVS sites offering the vaccine, the statement said, and eligibility requirements in each jurisdiction still apply.
The extra doses of the vaccine for pharmacies will come from increased production by vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer, said Zients.
“It is all a result of the increase in the scale of manufacture and we hope to be able to do everything we can, and we will do everything we can, to continue this expansion and make more vaccines available,” said Zients.
CNN’s Maggie Fox, Amanda Watts, Jacqueline Howard, Samira Said, Laura Ly, Virginia Langmaid and Gisela Crespo contributed to this report.