Amid rising concerns over emerging variant strains of COVID-19, top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci on Monday said the best defence is to get as many people vaccinated, as quickly as possible.
Fauci said while it is reasonable to consider studying the efficacy of giving only one dose of the Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines – in light of concerns over limited supplies – such a study would take months to complete and thus likely make its conclusions moot.
The optimal “approach would be to continue with getting as many people on their first dose as possible but also making sure that people on time get their second dose”, Fauci said during a news briefing.
“It’s an incentive to do what we have been saying all along: to vaccinate as many people as we can and to do so as quickly as we can,” he said.
On Sunday, throngs of mostly maskless fans took to the streets and packed sports bars in Tampa, Florida to celebrate a Super Bowl win, causing concern over that the gatherings would turn into so-called super-spreader events.
“It is a little frustrating because we have worked so hard,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on Monday during a news conference. “At this point in dealing with COVID-19, there is a level of frustration when you see that,” Castor said.
The White House coronavirus task force has said the United States is currently vaccinating an average of 1.3 million people every day, and that the majority of Americans would need to be vaccinated to stop the spread of COVID-19 infections.
In an interview with CBS aired on Sunday, US President Joe Biden, who took office on January 20, said he realised his predecessor’s administration’s handling of the pandemic was “even more dire than we thought” only after he entered the White House.
“We thought they had indicated there was a lot more vaccine available,” Biden said. “And didn’t turn out to be the case. So that’s why we’ve ramped up every way we can,” he said.
