It is too early to declare victory against COVID-19 even as cases decrease in the United States to the lowest rates since last June, Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned, The Guardian reported on Monday.
"We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go," said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. "But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer."
Fauci made the remarks as the country observes the Memorial Day weekend, which marks the unofficial start of summer and includes barbecues and trips to the beach, among other activies that could lead to the spread of the virus.
Although daily coronavirus cases have fallen 53% since May 1, rates remain high among the unvaccinated population and cases are growing globally, with already more cases worldwide this year than in all of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University.
"As long as there is some degree of activity throughout the world, there’s always a danger of variants emerging and diminishing somewhat the effectiveness of our vaccines," Fauci stressed.
He said that in order to counter that, "We are discussing right now at various levels about how we might be able to up production to get vaccine doses from the companies that are already making them for us, get more doses that will be able to be distributed to lower- and middle-income countries."
The U.S. is also trying to address the issues making it more difficult for some people to get vaccinated, including those opposed to it and others who haven’t received the vaccination due to lack of access to information or transportation or concerns about missing work.
"Today, in our current day, the accessibility and the convenience of getting a vaccine is really rather striking," Fauci said, reflecting on the fact that the White House has deployed more vaccination resources to under-served areas and mobile clinics and has bolstered a program by ride-share companies to give free trips to those getting vaccinated.
"We cannot abandon public health measures when you still have a degree of viral activity in the broad community in the United States," Fauci said, stressing that "Although we’re down to less than 30,000 infections per day that’s still a lot of infections per day."
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 59.8% of Americans 12 and older had received their first dose of the vaccine and 48.2% were fully vaccinated as of Sunday.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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