‘Degree of normality’ possible by spring 2022 if majority get COVID shot, Fauci says
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said the pandemic could be under control by spring 2022 if an “overwhelming majority” get COVID-19 vaccines.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “if we can get through this winter and get ... the overwhelming majority of the 90 million people who have not been vaccinated, vaccinated, I hope we can start to get some good control in the spring of 2022.”
Fauci defined “control” as vaccinating people who’ve already gotten sick with COVID-19 and recovered, as well as vaccinating the unvaccinated to achieve “a degree of overall blanket protection.”
“As we get into the spring, we can start getting back to a degree of normality, namely resuming the things that we were hoping that we could do: restaurants, theaters, that kind of thing,” he said.
Fauci’s comments come after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was officially approved Monday morning by the Food and Drug Administration.
Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines could be approved in the next few weeks, and a vaccine for younger children could be approved in the fall, according to Reuters.
COVID-19 cases have continued to spike across the country, fueled by vaccine hesitancy and the delta variant, which was discovered in India and is now the dominant strain in the U.S.
“Delta came along, and it’s almost like we have a new pandemic now,” Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told The Washington Post. “Everything we thought we knew about COVID-19 has to be revised.”
“I think we’re in a world of trouble for at least the next couple of months, but exactly what the shape of that trouble looks like, I can’t tell you,” he continued.
COVID-19 cases across the U.S. have risen 29% in the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have increased 39% over that same period as of Aug. 24, according to The New York Times.
More than 201 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, accounting for 60.8% of the population, as of Aug. 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 171 million eligible people are fully vaccinated.
The situation in some states is becoming increasingly dire. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced Monday that National Guard teams would be deployed to help out overwhelmed hospitals dealing with staffing shortages, CNN reported.
In Florida, 75 doctors walked out Monday to protest the unvaccinated patients overwhelming their hospitals, WFLA reported.
“We are exhausted. Our patience and resources are running low and we need your help,” said Dr. Rupesh Dharia from Palm Beach Internal Medicine, according to the station.
The U.S. has had more than 37 million coronavirus cases and 629,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data as of Aug. 24.
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 12:06 PM with the headline "‘Degree of normality’ possible by spring 2022 if majority get COVID shot, Fauci says."