Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Health and Infectious Diseases, said Monday that the U.S. public would likely begin receiving the COVID-19 vaccine a little early in the spring, but that it would happen a few months earlier. that the overwhelming majority of the population was immunized.
“I think people are a little confused about when to wait [the vaccine]. If you start vaccinating parts of the general public in April, when you get to the end of August … that’s when we should see an overwhelming majority, ”Fauci said in an interview with The Daily Beast. if you vaccinate very aggressively in May, June and July “.
Fauci’s comments clarified a statement Sunday from Dr. Vivek Murthy, the general surgeon’s candidate, to whom he told NBC Meet the press that “it may be closer to mid-summer or early fall when this vaccine is opened to the general population.” The statement left the implication that Joe Biden’s COVID working group – in which Murthy serves – was trying to lower expectations about the availability of a vaccine.
Fauci said that while the distribution of vaccines to the general public will likely begin in the spring, large areas of the country are likely to be vaccinated in late summer. “At this point we should return to a certain degree of normalcy,” Fauci said.
Fauci’s comments come as the second week of Pfizer and the first round of Moderna vaccine shipments head to states across the country. Millions of front-line health workers, including those working in long-term care centers, receive the first doses. Several essential front-line workers and people over the age of 75 will be included in the second tier of vaccine distribution in the coming weeks. Vice President Mike Pence told the nation’s governors on Monday – a copy obtained by The Daily Beast – that Operation Warp Speed is on track to oversee the distribution of 11 million doses of vaccine this week. The 11 million represent a combination of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. About 4 million are expected to come out next week.
Members of the White House COVID working group met to discuss the launch of the vaccine on Monday and spoke briefly about announcements from some states last week that they had received up to 30 percent less doses of Pfizer. than expected. A senior administration official said governors who spoke about the shortage were operating from old numbers and projections. The Daily Beast previously reported that some states had received projections for the vaccine that were twice as high as the number of doses they ended up receiving this week.
At Monday’s task force meeting, officials tempered concerns about future distribution issues, saying states should receive assignment numbers tomorrow for next week. Another senior government official noted the updated schedule of allocation announcements: on Friday, states had previously said what they would achieve for next week; they are now reported on Tuesday, as part of the reason states had not received the expected amount of doses. The number of doses available for a Tuesday release does not necessarily include the doses that could be available for release this Friday, the official said.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Pence on Monday acknowledged the change in the call allocation schedule. And General Gustave Perna, the head of Operation Warp Speed, also acknowledged last week’s confusion and called it a mistake.
“In all the deliveries we have made so far there has been an error and we have corrected it immediately,” Perna said.
Azar assured the governors that the distribution process will run more smoothly in the future.
“We continue to create more and more channels of communication with you … to avoid any confusion about numbers or assignments,” Azar said in the call.
Fauci, Azar and NIH health director Francis Collins will have to receive the Modern vaccine at a televised event on Tuesday. President-elect Joe Biden was fired from Pfizer on Monday.
As there are more and more doses of vaccines across the country, Fauci said he remains concerned about the vaccination of the vaccine and convincing the American public, including health care workers, that the vaccine is both safe and effective. effective.
Fauci and other task force officials have spent the past few weeks appearing on television and sitting in interviews to talk about the importance of getting vaccinated. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have discussed taking a more definitive step in promoting the vaccine, including writing ads for television and social media, according to two officials familiar with the plan. In the call with the governors, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield and Azar asked the governors to continue with the vaccine and to do so in public.
The Biden team is also in the process of developing more definitive plans for implementing vaccination for the general public and making sure most Americans get vaccinated this spring and summer, according to familiar people. with the planning of the president-elect. This planning has included finding new ways to help states ensure their residents are informed about the vaccine they will receive and the steps the company and the federal government have taken to ensure their safety.