The White House held “serious discussions” with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the recommendation that people vaccinated for COVID-19 be allowed to socialize together, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci – who said he was looking forward to following that advice and finally hug your daughter after a year.
Noting that “although it is not supported by data, it is supported by common sense,” Fauci told Chris Cuomo of CNN on Thursday night that people who received all their doses could start to leave.
Fauci, who serves as scientific adviser to President Biden, noted that “although the risk is not zero, the risk becomes extremely low when you vaccinate both parties.
“So, let’s start seeing people saying, ‘Hey, the more people get vaccinated, I can have dinner with my family member who comes,’ he said.
“Before being vaccinated, if they wanted to visit you, they would have to be quarantined for a while, get tested, wear a mask,” said the country’s leading infectious disease doctor.
“My professional judgment is that when my daughter wants to come here and is doubly vaccinated, I will put her at home and give her a big hug that I haven’t been able to do for a year,” he added.
Fauci also discussed the new coronavirus strain emerging in the Big Apple that shares some of the characteristics with the South African variant.
In mid-February, the variant – called B.1.526 – was present in about 12 percent of coronavirus samples collected in and around the city, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
“You know, it started just one cluster in the Washington Heights section at Columbia Medical Center and then it started going through other parts of the city, the other neighborhoods, and it’s something that you really want to pay attention to because it has some worrying mutations, the mutation cluster ”Said Fauci on CNN.
“Again, this is the reason why you continue to take public health measures and vaccinate as many people as possible. Everything you throw at a mutant will be combated by vaccinating people, ”he said.
When asked whether current vaccines work against the variant, Fauci said: “No, we don’t know if it works directly against it, but that is the point you want to make to people.
“Even if this vaccine does not correspond directly to a variant that can occur anywhere – South America, South Africa, California, New York – the higher the level of protection against the original, there is an overflow of protection against the variant . ”