Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that getting the COVID-19 vaccination will not give people a ‘free pass to travel’ as health officials announced the full vaccination of just 3.8 million Americans and hundreds lined up to get the shot. Dodger Stadium in badly affected California.
The country’s top infectious disease expert appeared in a CNN Global Town Hall hosted by Anderson Cooper and Dr Sanjay Gupta when he answered a viewer’s question about when immunity starts after receiving the vaccine.
Retired nurse, Carole Gardner, explained to Fauci that she and her husband were unable to travel to see their grandchildren. She explained that she and her husband will receive the second dose of the Moderna vaccine on February 19.
“When do we have immunity and when can we travel?” Gardner asks.
In response, Fauci said, “Maximum immunity starts about 10 days to two weeks and then after the second dose … That would give you 94-95 percent efficacy and a good safety profile.”
Fauci warned, however, that it is “not a good idea to travel, period.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that getting the COVID-19 vaccination won’t give people a ‘free travel pass’
On Wednesday night, drivers were still queuing for COVID-19 vaccinations and testing in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles
“We don’t want people to think that because they’ve been vaccinated, other public health recommendations just don’t apply,” he continued.
“So getting vaccinated doesn’t mean I now have a free pass to travel, nor does I have a free pass to put aside all the public health measures we talk about all the time,” Fauci said.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday evening, hundreds of drivers were seen lining up to get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium in hard-hit Los Angeles. More than 1 million cases have been reported in Los Angeles County and at least 15,897 people have died.
Its comments came just a day after Johnson and Johnson announced it would likely publish the results of phase three studies of the one-time coronavirus vaccine next week.
The vaccine is cheaper and easier to store and transport, which, along with the fact that it requires only one dose, could accelerate the extremely slow introduction of vaccines in the US.
The 100 million doses that Johnson & Johnson has pledged to the US would increase US supply by about 25 percent.
However, President Joe Biden’s own COVID-19 response team admitted that it will be months before anyone who wants a vaccine can get one, and that “ we’ll run into unexpected problems ” during the rollout, said acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt.
Earlier on Wednesday, drivers were waiting in line at the mega COVID-19 vaccination site set up in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium
Vaccinations started five weeks ago, but only 6.2 percent of the U.S. population has received the first doses of Pfizers or Moderna’s two-dose vaccines. That’s about 20.7 million who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
About 3.8 million people are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It’s because the US death toll has risen to 428,654, including 3,990 new deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 25 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Encouragingly, the number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations last week were all lower than in previous weeks, but still remain high with an average of 3,287 people dying per day.
Dozens of precious doses of the two vaccines have been wasted because no one could be found to take them before they went bad, or because of careless mistakes, such as freezers being disconnected.
The simpler single-dose injection of Johnson & Johnson can be a huge help in solving some of these problems. It has a contract with the US for at least one million doses and has pledged to distribute one billion doses worldwide this year.
About 20.7 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine. About 3.8 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Fauci said Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is being tested for the highly contagious ‘supercovid’ variants from South Africa and Brazil.
But even if the results are positive, the FDA isn’t expected to release the vaccine for emergency use until March, raising questions about why there must be a painful, months-long delay.
Meanwhile, Biden has raided the commitment of his COVID-19 vaccination target and announced on Monday that he thinks the US could give more than 1.5 million vaccinations a day, up from a million.
Currently, the US vaccinates an average of 1.27 million people per day. Supplies could be the biggest hurdle to achieving and maintaining Biden’s goal of vaccinating 1.5 million people a day.
Together, Moderna and Pfizer have pledged to deliver 200 million doses by the end of March.
More than 25.5 million infections have been reported in the US since the start of the pandemic
Pfizer thinks it could provide an additional 20 million doses by then, and the US is in talks with Moderna and Pfizer to purchase an additional 200 million doses (of 100 million each), which will be available this summer.
But there is no stock. The federal government withholds enough supplies to cover two to three days of doses in case of production disruptions.
Otherwise, it counts on the manufacturers to maintain a steady flow of new doses to the state, Slavitt said.
He said the government has ‘confidence’ in these manufacturers, but even he admitted that production disruptions are likely to occur, and the government is only planning a small cushion amid a rollout that has been chaotic so far and many states on the brink of out of doses.