Dr. Fauci Addresses Vaccination Rollout, Masking Challenges, At-Home Testing
By Melanie Blackman
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that if a significant enough portion of the population receives a COVID-19 vaccine, herd immunity could be achieved by the end of next year and society can “approach some degree of normalcy that is close to where we were before.”
Fauci spoke with Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN at an online event jointly hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine, where he addressed the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, masking, and COVID-19 testing.
“We should not say that vaccines are a substitution for public health measures,” Fauci said. “It’s a complement to public health measures, protecting yourself from clinical disease, protecting yourself from severe diseases, possibly protecting you from infection.”
He also urged that masking and social distance efforts should continue even after a vaccine is rolled out.
“The vaccine is not 100% effective, and we don’t know what the durability of the protection is … wearing a mask, social distancing avoiding crowds, that should all stay as we get into the vaccine program, because there’s still a lot of virus out there,” he said.
As the FDA reviews the emergency use authorization requests from both Pfizer and Moderna for their respective potential vaccines, Fauci urged the public to trust the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
“The career scientists at the FDA, our regulatory authorities, are totally committed to the safety and the health of the American public,” he said. “When a vaccine is deemed to be safe and effective by the FDA, the American public needs to appreciate that that process for that decision was.”
When asked about the current challenges around COVID-19 testing, Fauci said he remains positive that the country will get to a point where more tests will be available, including at-home testing.
“There’s absolutely no reason why we cannot get to that point,” Fauci said. “We have done things infinitely more complicated than that. We have the technology; we can do it.”
When asked what he will do if people still refuse to listen to his advice, Fauci said he will remain steadfast in helping share information about the pandemic.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases added that while accessing people who don’t believe him is difficult, with the help of trusted politicians and individuals out in the community, it may help.
“The responsibility I have… it is not an option to throw your hands up and get discourages and walk away from it. Because the enormity of the problem, and the suffering, and the mortality is such that it would be unconscionable to walk away from this,” he said.
Melanie Blackman is the strategy editor at HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.