Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday that he expects the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for emergency use and urged Americans to get vaccinated whenever it is available to them.
In an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” program, Fauci told co-host Savannah Guthrie that he expects “nothing but good news” on Friday, when the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is expected to vote to recommend authorization from vaccine.
“Having two is good; having three is absolutely better,” said Fauci, the country’s leading disease specialist. “It is better because there are more options. It is better because it increases the supply of vaccines ”.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be administered in a single injection, while the other two vaccines in use by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech require two doses, with an interval of three to four weeks. Federal documents indicated that the latest vaccine was safe and highly effective – 86 percent – against the most severe results of the disease.
When asked by Guthrie about the varying percentage effectiveness of each Covid-19 vaccine, Fauci urged Americans to “get the vaccine” whenever it is available.
“This is a race, Savannah, between the virus and the introduction of vaccines in people,” said Fauci. “The more you are expected to be vaccinated, the more likely the virus is to get a variant or mutation.”
Fauci’s interview came after Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Thursday that drug makers would begin testing a new version of their Covid-19 vaccine that was designed to specifically target emerging variants in South Africa.
He said that even with variants against which the vaccine may be less effective, “the vaccine is still good against serious illnesses”.
On Wednesday, Moderna announced that the company was sending doses of its variant-specific booster dose to the National Institutes of Health for clinical testing.
The latest developments were part of a larger effort to contain strains of coronavirus that are constantly changing and circulating around the world. Studies have found that the two Covid-19 vaccines separate from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were both effective against the UK variant, which was the predominant strain of spread in the US
Fauci warned that more emerging variants would occur, which was all the more reason to be vaccinated, saying: “Viruses don’t mutate unless you give them a chance to replicate.”