Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday emphasized the importance of getting more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, arguing there should be “no confusion” that vaccinations — as opposed to booster shots — remain the key to beating the pandemic.
“Our highest priority still is getting the unvaccinated vaccinated,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “And there should be no confusion about that. The highest priority is not getting boosters. We think it’s important to get boosters to people, but the overwhelming highest priority is to vaccinate the unvaccinated.”
Fauci told host Chuck Todd that booster shots were not “a luxury,” and he defended President Joe Biden’s previous announcement that boosters would be more widely available before the Food and Drug Administration had fully studied their impacts on younger people.
An advisory panel last week urged the agency to recommend Pfizer booster shots for just high-risk individuals and those 65 and older. Pfizer booster shots for those individuals could begin officially rolling out as soon as this week, Fauci said. He noted more data from vaccine makers Moderna and Johnson & Johnson will be available within weeks and could reshape recommendations.
“The data is literally a couple to a few weeks away,” he said. “We’re working on that right now, to get the data to the FDA so they can examine it and make a determination about the boosters for those people. They’re not being left behind, by any means.”
Health experts and public health officials have been hoping booster doses could help battle the delta variant of the virus, which has proven far more contagious than the virus that initially spread across the globe last year.
About 65% of Massachusetts’ full population is now fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated and partially vaccinated people account for the majority of new infections and hospitalizations.
A MassLive analysis of COVID vaccination data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found about 60% of newly reported infections in the state are among the unvaccinated. About 60% to 75% of patients in the hospital who tested positive for the virus are not fully vaccinated.
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