WASHINGTON (TNS) — Reluctance among certain parts of the population to receiving a vaccine is one of the biggest risks to coronavirus control efforts, said President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
“I just don’t get it,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about polling showing many Republicans, especially men, don’t want a vaccine.
“We’ve got to dissociate political persuasion from commonsense, no-brainer public health things,” Fauci said.
A PBS News Hour/NPR/Marist poll released Thursday showed that 41% of people who identify as Republicans, including 49% of GOP-leaning men, said they would not get one of the three federally approved coronavirus vaccines. Among Democratic-leaning men, only 6% said the same.
Fauci made three Sunday talk show appearances to mark a year since the Covid-19 outbreak was deemed a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Since then, some 120 million cases have been identified around the world and over 2.6 million people have died, including over 534,000 in the U.S.
He continued to warn against becoming complacent in the U.S. even as cases and hospitalizations drop sharply and the pace of vaccinations accelerates.
“If you’re going for a touchdown, don’t spike the ball on the 5-yard line. Wait until you get into the end zone,” Fauci said. “We’re not in the end zone yet.” New variants of the coronavirus are a particular risk, and have contributed to a fresh increase in cases in Europe, where fewer vaccines have been given so far.
In a speech Thursday, Biden pledged that all adult Americans will be able to sign up for COVID-19 shots by May 1 and return to a semblance of normal life by the July 4 Independence Day, the holiday traditionally marked by festive public gatherings and backyard barbecues.
Fauci said that timeline, which he said was “a couple of months” ahead of where he recently thought the U.S. would be, reflected “a full court press” to mobilize vaccination efforts, including in hard-to-reach communities.
Vaccinations against COVID-19 in the U.S. have topped 106 million, with more than 2 million recently being administered each day on average. Supplies of the three approved shots in the U.S. is projected to surge in coming weeks, with enough for every American before June.
The U.S. is on course to reach the lowest level of infections since the start of October, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. The average number of daily cases over the last week has fallen 15% compared with the previous week, continuing a decline that started in January.
