Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific advisor, Moncef Slaoui, said on Sunday that it could take months for researchers to know for sure whether transmission of COVID-19 is possible from a person who received the vaccine.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, host Margaret Brennan asked Slaoui when scientists will know whether such transmission is possible, a key factor in determining when the United States will develop collective immunity to the virus.
“Do you have a date for whether, after being vaccinated, you can still pass the virus on to others?” asked Brennan.
“No,” replied Slaoui. “These studies, frankly, will be based on observational data from the population. I don’t think we will have data before the end of spring.”
Does #OperationWarpSpeed have a schedule of the time you were vaccinated, if you can still give # coronavirus for others?
Slaoui account @margbrennan “no” without data projected on such a timeline until late spring pic.twitter.com/0Ibkk4YWl1
– Face the nation (@FaceTheNation) January 3, 2021
He also addressed reports of delays in launching vaccinations in the United States, pointing out that Surgeon General Jerome Adams
Jerome AdamsSunday shows the preview: Senate candidates are preparing for the second round of Georgia; government continues launching coronavirus vaccine on Sunday programs – opposition to Trump’s relief bill, COVID-19, dominates Surgeon General on medical racism: ‘We need to recognize these things’ MORE did in a separate interview on Sunday for a number that indicates that 1.5 million Americans have received vaccines in the past 72 hours.
“Our assumption is that there is a plan to immunize,” said Slaoui of the state’s efforts to distribute the vaccine. “We are here to fulfill any specific request. We will do the best we can, as we have been doing for the past eight months, to get these vaccines into people’s arms.”
Senior federal officials have defended the deployment of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines in recent days amid reports of a significant gap between the number of vaccines distributed to states, which totaled more than 14 million, and the number of Americans who were vaccinated . Just over 4 million doses have been administered in the USA
“Somewhere, there is a lag in how the numbers are calculated, but it is certainly less than the 14 million doses that are already available to us,” said Slaoui last week. “We agree that this number is less than we expected.”