Fauci Urges Americans to Get Covid Recall as United States Approaches 800,000 Deaths | Antoine Fauci | Latest News Headlines

U.S. government infectious disease chief Anthony Fauci on Sunday stepped up his calls for Americans to be vaccinated against Covid-19, as the United States approaches 800,000 lives lost to the coronavirus since. the start of the pandemic.

Fauci warned that the Omicron variant appeared to be able to “escape” the protection of two initial doses of mRNA-like Covid vaccines – Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna – as well as post-infection therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.

Omicron is raising new fears as infections in the United States start to rise again, with infections currently still being led by the highly transmissible Delta variant that has dominated since the summer.

Fauci said an additional vaccine provides “optimal” protection against Omicron, although the official government designation of “fully vaccinated” has remained at two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or one of Johnson’s vaccines. Johnson, which was developed by another method.

“Preliminary data shows that when you get a booster, say a third injection of mRNA, the level of protection is high enough that it works well against Omicron,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute. allergies and infections. Diseases and the president’s chief medical adviser, told ABC.

It was, he said: “Another reason to encourage unvaccinated people to be vaccinated, but especially those who are vaccinated to be boosted because this decrease in protection seems to go back a long way. If you want to be optimally protected, you should really get yourself a booster.

Although vaccination rates, especially boosters, have increased significantly in recent weeks, about 40% of eligible adults in the United States are still not fully protected, and the participation rate for children ages 5 to 11, who are newly eligible, remains below 20%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“Follow the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, that when you are in an indoor gathering place and you do not know the immunization status of people around you, wear a mask. The masking will not be forever, but it can get us out of the very difficult situation we find ourselves in right now, ”Fauci said.

Experts are still discovering the characteristics of the Omicron. CDC director Rochelle Walensky said last week that very preliminary data so far showed Omicron was relatively mild.

Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, meanwhile, defended his new vaccine mandate for private sector employees.

“Omicron is there, it’s nationwide, this variant is moving fast,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union show.

“We have to go faster. What I hear from our business community, their biggest fear, are closures, going back to where we were in 2020, restrictions, people losing their livelihood.

“The biggest threat to jobs is that Omicron and the cold winter months are going to overload Covid and push us back. Since I implemented warrants from August, we’ve seen more one million more doses, 71% of our population fully vaccinated. A lot of those people made the decision because the warrant was there, “he said.

A federal judge is due to rule Tuesday on a challenge to De Blasio’s vaccine mandate for the city’s 160,000 public sector workers, including police, firefighters and sanitation workers.