- Dr. Anthony Fauci said “scientific data” suggests prioritizing both doses of the vaccine rather than giving single injections to more Americans.
- There is a discussion among health experts about the best strategy for vaccinating as many people as possible.
- Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses for maximum effectiveness.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden and longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Sunday that “scientific data” supports prioritizing the administration of both doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines today available, rather than focusing the current supply on administering the first shot to as many people as possible.
“What we have now, and what we need to keep track of, is the scientific data we have accumulated,” said Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease specialist, to Chuck Todd during an interview on Sunday morning on the “Meet the Press” program. from NBC. “And it’s really solid.”
Currently, there is a discussion among medical experts about the most effective way to use the current supply of vaccines to better increase immunity in the United States and to allow United States companies and institutions, such as schools, to resume operations safely and avoid the spread of the virus.
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As reported by NBC News, Dr. Michael Osterholm, a leading infectious disease specialist and the Infectious Disease Research and Policy Center, said last week that he supported an effort to prioritize administering the first dose to more Americans to prevent further spread of the most contagious strains of the virus.
“We still want to receive two doses in all, but I think that now, before this increase, we need to take as much of a dose in as many people over 65 as possible, to reduce serious illnesses and death that will occur in the coming weeks”, said Osterholm during last week’s “Meet the Press”.
Also last week, Andy Slavitt, a senior consultant on the Biden COVID response team, instructed medical providers to discontinue the practice of insuring the vaccine supply to ensure that their patients received their second injection in time, saying that this led to providers to cancel appointments for patients waiting to receive their first dose.
Two vaccines, created by Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, at the end of last year were authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but the U.S. launch has been plagued with headaches due to supply limited. Both vaccines require two doses to achieve maximum effectiveness.
“If you look at the escalation of dose availability purely in manufacturing capacity and capacity, it will increase and continue to increase as we move from February to March through April and beyond,” said Fauci on Sunday. “Even if there is a clear and clear discrepancy between demand and supply, it will improve.”