With March approaching, we are approaching the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the blockades in the US due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus. With many of us still working or attending classes at home, it may not seem like we’ve gone very far, but White House COVID advisor Anthony Fauci, MD, has just offered an optimistic projection: The infectious disease specialist predicts that, in the next two months, the general population should start receiving his vaccine. Read on to find out what’s behind Fauci’s timeline, and for less encouraging news from Fauci, Dr. Fauci has just provided this scary update on the new COVID strain.
Although containing COVID remains a challenge, especially as more transmissible strains of the virus spread across the country, Fauci predicts that things will soon change. “I can say that things will get better as we move from February to March, to April,” said Fauci in a Feb. 7 appearance on NBC Meet the press. “The number of vaccine doses that will be available will increase substantially.”
Fauci said the main obstacle to vaccinating more people now is the lack of vaccines available to those who want them, but he believes the problem will be resolved next month. “Even if there is a clear and clear discrepancy between demand and supply, it will get better as we move from February to March,” said Fauci. And for the most up-to-date information, subscribe to our daily newsletter.
The expected change in the rate at which the United States is able to inoculate people will result from some major changes in the supply of vaccines. “Not only will there be more doses of Moderna and Pfizer as we move through March and April, but we will also have J&J [Johnson & Johnson] or Janssen online, “noted Fauci.
Having more vaccines to distribute will speed up the vaccination process, especially since Johnson & Johnson is just a single dose, which will take half the time for part of the population to obtain COVID immunity. On February 4, Johnson & Johnson announced that it had applied for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization for its vaccine. And to learn more about this vaccine, these are the side effects of the New Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
CNBC reported that on January 25, the president Joe Biden announced that it intended the United States to administer 1.5 million vaccines a day. “I think, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbor, and the stream not going up, as the old saying goes, I think we can reach 1.5 million a day, instead of 1 million a day,” said Biden. “But we have to meet that goal of one million a day.”
According The Washington Post, on February 6, almost 2 million doses of the vaccine were administered, which raised the country’s daily average to 1.4 million. And for essential vaccine guidance, Dr. Fauci says don’t do this after your first COVID injection.
On January 22, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report that estimated that the British strain of COVID would become dominant in the United States in late March. As this more transmissible strain of COVID gains momentum, so does the vaccine effort.
“We are really in a race against new variants”, Wan Yang, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told NBC. “We need to prepare as much as possible before things increase to a level that puts more pressure on our health systems.” And for more distressing news about the future of the pandemic, President Biden just provided this grim update from COVID.