Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday that the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations in the US “will increase” in the coming months, and that by April, anyone – not just those in high-risk groups – could catch up. Photograph.
The country’s top infectious physician said on Thursday that the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations in the US “will increase” in the coming months, and that around April, the “hunting season” for vaccines can begin, with anyone – not just those in high-risk groups – getting the injection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and scientific adviser to President Joe Biden, said on NBC’s “Today” program that “the increase has been considerable” in the distribution of vaccine doses to Americans, and that he predicts “much faster dosing acceleration” in early spring.
Fauci credited the forthcoming deliveries of the two approved vaccines, the possible approval of a third and the measures taken by the Biden government to increase the country’s ability to deliver doses.
He predicted that in April there would be a “hunting season”, in which “practically anyone in any category could start getting vaccinated”. From then on, it would take a few more months “just logistically putting the vaccine in people’s arms”, but in the middle or late summer, he predicted “achieving the goal of having the overwhelming majority of people in this country vaccinated”.
So far, about 30 million Americans have received one dose of the two-dose vaccines; 10 million had both.
Fauci also told ProPublica that children from the first grade can be vaccinated until September, saying that “clinical trials in what we call age reduction, where you do a clinical trial with people aged 16 to 12, after 12 to 9, then 9 to 6 ”, had started.
That said, other experts hope the process will go faster. Dr. Buddy Creech, associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program, told ProPublica that immunizing children was an important step in preventing the spread of the virus as a whole.
Otherwise, Creech said: “We will have tens of millions of individuals in our communities who will be able to maintain the virus. And when that happens, what allows these unusual variants to emerge and may have the ability to escape our immunity. “
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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