Washington – Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said Sunday that the number of available doses of vaccines will increase sharply in the coming weeks following the federal approval of a third coronavirus vaccine.
“We have to pull back gradually [on restrictions] as we vaccinate more people, and this happens every day, there are more and more people and, above all, as we receive more doses, which will increase drastically as we enter April and May, ”Fauci told “Face the Nation” to reduce mitigation measures.
The Food and Drug Administration has already authorized three COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, with the most recent being the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which received the green light last week.
The United States now administers at least 2 million shots every day and 87.9 million doses have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden has predicted that by the end of May there will be enough supply of vaccines to cover all adults, while Fauci said high school students will likely be able to receive their vaccines in the fall quarter and elementary students in the first quarter of 2022 .
Fauci said that as the supply of vaccines increases, the federal government “will have to make a big push to put it in people’s arms.”
“But right now we’re going to be doing a lot, a lot better,” he said. “We will have community vaccination centers, vaccines in pharmacies.”
Although the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has dropped dramatically in recent weeks, public health officials warn that the nation has reached a plateau of between 60,000 and 70,000 new infections a day, which Fauci said ” is not an acceptable level “.
This mismatch occurs when some states like Texas and Mississippi have begun to lift mask warrants and relax other restrictions designed to mitigate the spread of coronavirus against the guidance of federal public health officials.
Fauci said the nation is “going in the right direction,” but stressed that mitigation measures should be withdrawn slowly and carefully as more Americans are inoculated.
“Don’t turn this switch on and off because it would really be risky to have another climb again, which we don’t want to happen because we’re at a pretty high level,” he said.
While the number of Americans who have been shot continues to grow, the Biden administration has not yet released activity guidelines for those who have been fully vaccinated.
But Fauci said those CDC guidelines should come out “imminently” in the coming days.
“With each passing day, we keep the lid on things getting better and better, because we’re putting two million vaccines in people’s arms every day and as the days and weeks go by, you get more and more protection from them, not just from the people, but from the community, ”he said. “So we’re going in the right direction. We just need to stay a little longer.”