Fauci Cautions Against Delaying the Second Round of COVID-19 Vaccinations
WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s leading public health advisers, said Sunday that the U.S. should still proceed with its plan to give people both doses of the currently available Covid-19 vaccines, even as some top health care officials have suggested that the priority should be giving first doses to as many people as possible.
There’s disagreement among some experts about how to proceed amid supply shortages and new variants that could become more resistant to current vaccines or an increase in infections. Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who advised the President Joe Biden’s transition team on the pandemic, said on last week’s “Meet the Press” that he believed prioritizing more first doses would set the country on a better path forward ahead of a possible new surge he compared to a “hurricane.”
But Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told “Meet the Press” Sunday he doesn’t believe the science is clear yet on the issue, and that studying whether that path forward could be better would take too much time.
