Despite the plummeting number of new COVID-19 infections in the United States, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview broadcast Sunday (Feb. 21) on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
Asked by host Chuck Todd whether the country had reached herd immunity status, the point at which spreading of a disease all but ceases because potential carriers are immune, Fauci said: “I’m not so sure that this is herd immunity that we’re talking about. We had a big peak, and we’re starting to come back down… I don’t think we vaccinated enough people yet to get herd immunity. I think [what] you’re seeing is the natural peaking and coming down.”
Fauci warned about complacency, saying: “What I don’t and none of my colleagues want to see is that when you look at that slope coming down to say, ‘Wow, we’re out of the woods now, we’re in good shape.’ We’re not because the baseline of daily infections is still very, very high … we want to get that baseline really, really low before we start thinking that we’re out of the woods.”
In answering a question about how badly the cold snap gripping the South, especially Texas, has damaged vaccination efforts, Fauci said: “Obviously it is a setback because you’d like to see the steady flow of vaccine getting out there … but we can play pretty good catchup.”
The 6 million vaccine backlog created by the weather should be cleared “by the middle of the week,” Fauci said.
On the topic of the power of second vaccine shots for patients, Fauci said the evidence suggests a second shot is a good idea regardless of whether the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine is being used.
“When you give a boost, you increase the power or the level of the antibodies by at least 10-fold,” he said. “So, you’re talking about a very, very big increase. We don’t know what the risk of a single dose is.”
Fauci also said early signs are that the vaccine is working well for pregnant women and not hurting their unborn children, although formal studies remain underway.
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