Washington – Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said on Sunday that the number of available vaccine doses will soar in the coming weeks following federal approval of a third coronavirus vaccine.
“We have to withdraw gradually [on restrictions] As we get more people vaccinated, and it happens every day, more and more people come, and especially as we get more doses, which will increase dramatically as we go into April and May, “Fauci said on” Face the Nation “of scaling back mitigating measures.
The Food and Drug Administration has now cleared three COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, with the most recent, Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot, getting the green light last week.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 2 million injections are now given every day in the US and 87.9 million doses have been given. Mr Biden has predicted there will be enough vaccination to cover all adults by the end of May, while Fauci said high school students will likely be able to receive their vaccines by the fall and elementary school students by the first quarter of 2022.
Fauci said that as the supply of vaccines grows, the federal government will “have to do a big push to get it into the arms of the people.”
“But we’ll do much, much better by then,” he said. “We get vaccination centers in the community, vaccines in pharmacies.”
While the number of new coronavirus cases in the US has declined sharply in recent weeks, public health officials warn that the nation has reached a plateau of between 60,000 and 70,000 new infections per day, which is “not an acceptable level,” Fauci said.
That leveling off comes as some states like Texas and Mississippi have begun to lift mask mandates and relax other restrictions designed to soften the spread of the coronavirus against federal public health officials’ guidelines.
Fauci said the nation is “moving in the right direction,” but stressed that mitigating measures should be slowly and cautiously reversed as more Americans are vaccinated.
“Don’t turn that switch on and off because it would be really risky to get another wave again, which we don’t want because we’re flattening at a pretty high level,” he said.
While the number of Americans who have received their injections continues to grow, the Biden administration has not yet released guidelines for activities for those who are fully vaccinated.
But Fauci said those CDC guidelines are “imminent” within the next few days.
“Every day that goes by that we keep the lid on, it will get better and better, as we now put 2 million vaccinations in the arms of individuals every day, and as the days and weeks go by, you have more and more protection, not just from individuals, but also from the community, ”he said. So we’re going in the right direction. We just have to hang around there a bit longer. ‘