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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s New Day Thursday, that while the Covid-19 prognosis is good for the United States, vaccinations need to continue.
“The prognosis is good, if the patient continues to do what the patient is doing, and that is continuing as a country, if you want to make that metaphor go, continue to get vaccinated,” Fauci said, adding that the declining numbers of cases are “very encouraging.”
“The one thing we want to make sure is that we don’t declare victory prematurely and feel that because things are going in the right direction that we don’t have to keep vaccinating people,” he said. “We’re on a really good track now to really crush this outbreak. And the more people we get vaccinated, the more assuredness that we’re going to have that we’re going to be able to do that.”
Reaching President Biden’s goal of having 70% of US adults with at least one shot by July 4 is something that he wants to happen – and potentially surpass – which is why there are actions now to reach as many people as possible.
“Whatever it takes, make it extremely easy for people to get vaccinated, give incentives, do whatever you can do to get people to get vaccinated, that’s what we really need to do, John,” he said.
When asked about concerns about upticks in cases following Memorial Day and as fewer people wear masks, Fauci said that it wouldn’t be uniform throughout the country because of differing levels of vaccination.
“If you have a very high percentage of people vaccinated, you’re not going to see a substantial blip – you may see a little bit, not anything that even resembles a surge,” he said.
“My concern is, is in those states in which you have relatively few compared to others’ people vaccinated, when you’re below 50% of the people being vaccinated, that’s when you’re going to have a problem,” he added.
Having about 50% of adults fully vaccinated and about 62% of adults having received at least one dose across the US as a whole means “as a nation, I feel fairly certain you’re not going to see the kind of surges we’ve seen in the past,” Fauci said, but added “what I am concerned about are those states in which the level of vaccination is low, that you may continue to see higher levels of cases as we get into the summer.”