The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are likely to launch new guidelines on reopening classrooms across America for face-to-face learning “before the end of this week,” said White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci , to the “Special Report” Monday.
“I think it would be important, instead of trying to get different opinions about it, let’s see what the guidance shows and then we could all discuss the various aspects of the guidance,” said Fauci to host Bret Baier. “But it will come out, I’m pretty sure, before the end of the week.”
At the beginning of the program, Fauci reiterated that although he considers teachers to be “essential staff” and “it would be important to vaccinate them”, “there are situations where it is probably still possible to take children back to school, provided they do so in a safe environment , vis-à-vis masking and other public health measures. “
With two vaccines in the pipeline and a third, from Johnson & Johnson, likely to be available in the coming weeks, Fauci told Baier that the US is seeing “a plateau and a drop in the number of [new] cases, [a] quite significant decrease. We hope to continue to move in that direction.
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“That’s the good news,” added Fauci. “The somewhat challenging news is that we have variants, namely mutations, that occurred and were dominant in places like the United Kingdom, which are now here in the United States. And … the data we received from our British colleagues is that this O viruses tend to spread more easily from person to person, which means that we will have to double our public health measures.
However, said Fauci, early studies showed “the vaccine that we have and that we are distributing now, although the supply has not yet fully met demand, the vaccine is effective against this variant that is prevalent in the UK. So we have a We have to do two things simultaneously, we have to adhere to public health measures: masking, physical distance, avoiding crowded environments.
“At the same time, as far as possible, we vaccinate as many people as possible. This will help to stem the outbreak and also help to stem the spread of these variants, which are of concern here in the United States and other countries. “
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When Baier asked Fauci to say when he believed Americans could go to a concert, theatrical performance or sporting event without masks, Fauci replied, “If we can – and I used this as an estimate, it is not definitive – if we can vaccinate 70 -85% of the population and get what we hope is a degree of collective immunity, which really is an umbrella or a veil of protection against the community where the level of virus is so low that it is not a threat after all, at that point you could start thinking in terms of not having to have a uniform wearing masks on, but we’re certainly not close to that yet. “
“If everything falls into place and we get it under control, it is conceivable that you could step back a little in some of the public health measures when we get to the end of this year’s fall,” he added. But there is no guarantee of that. “