Sunday, during an appearance on CNN, Biden medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci offered the possibility that a three-dose regimen may be the proper regimen for immunization against the coronavirus.
Fauci told CNN’s Jim Acosta that the goal continues to be more vaccinations.
“Well, to some extent, that’s indirect,” he explained. “We need the boost because ultimately it may turn out, Jim, that the ultimate proper immunization regimen is a three-dose regimen. Remember, we made it a two-dose regimen. We were dealing with an emergent situation. We needed to get those vaccines out because they were life-saving. And in fact, they have been life-saving. What we’re observing now, not only here in the United States but in other countries, including Israel and the U.K., that the durability of the protection tends to wane, particularly in the context of the Delta variant. The good news, as I mentioned a moment ago, is that the boosters really jack up the response very, very high. And we hope that that response would be durable.”
“Getting back to your question is that when you have unvaccinated people, you have a dynamic of virus replication and transmission in the community which is not only not good for the people who are unvaccinated, but indirectly it may ultimately be detrimental to the unvaccinated people because the more circulation of virus you have, the more breakthrough infections you will see,” Fauci continued. “So the best thing that we could have is the overwhelming majority of the population get vaccinated. That would unquestionably bring the level of virus so low in the community that you would not only see unvaccinated people who are vaccinated now protected, but the people who were originally vaccinated would not have as many breakthrough infections.”
“So that’s the reason why we continue to urge people to get vaccinated,” he added.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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