The US will soon see surges in cases
of the highly infectious Delta variant of Covid-19 in areas where
vaccination rates are low, Anthony Fauci has predicted, calling
resistance to vaccination “sad” and “tragic”.
Such resistance is particularly strong among Republicans: a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Sunday found that 86% of Democrats but only 45% of Republicans have received at least one shot.
The same poll found
that a third of adults who had not had a shot said they would not or
probably would not get one. Of those respondents, nearly three-quarters
said officials like Fauci were exaggerating the risk posed by the Delta
variant. A little more than three-quarters believed they had little or
no risk of contracting Covid-19.
The Biden administration
has trumpeted the success of its vaccination campaign, with 66.8% of US
adults having received at least one dose by 1 July and 54.6% of all
Americans having received at least one shot. But a target of 70% of
adults with at least one shot by 4 July was expected to be missed.
More than 605,000 have died
in the US. The Delta variant is present in at least 98 countries. On
Saturday, the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that vaccine availability was being “outpaced by variants”.
Fauci,
Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has served seven presidents since
1984 as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases. He was speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview
broadcast in full on Sunday.
Asked if the Delta
variant was more lethal than others and if he was concerned it could
cause a spike in cases as society reopens, he said: “I don’t think
you’re going to be seeing anything nationwide, because fortunately we
have a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So it’s
going to be regional.”
Fauci,
80, came to increased prominence in the Trump administration, when he
was frequently at odds with a mercurial president. Two Washington Post
reporters’ account of Trump’s pandemic response – titled Nightmare Scenario
– was published this week. It details attacks on Fauci from insiders
including economic advisers Stephen Moore and Peter Navarro, and threats
from Trump supporters that led to Fauci being assigned official
protection.
Speaking to NBC, Fauci said Americans could be confused as Delta cases rise.
“We’re
going to see … almost two types of America,” he said. “You know, those
regions of America which are highly vaccinated and we have a low level
of dynamics of infection. And in some places, some states, some cities,
some areas, where the level of vaccination is low and the level of virus
dissemination is high – that’s where you’re going to see the spikes.”
Biden addressed the danger of the Delta variant on Friday.
“I
am concerned that people who have not gotten vaccinated have the
capacity to catch the variant and spread the variant to other people who
haven’t been vaccinated,” he said. “I’m not concerned there’s going to
be a major outbreak … another epidemic nationwide. But I am concerned
lives will be lost.”
00:34
Biden warns 'lives will be lost' if more people aren't vaccinated against Covid – video
Fauci
told NBC that of nearly 10,000 US deaths in June, “about 99.2% are
unvaccinated. About 0.8% are vaccinated. No vaccine is perfect. But when
you talk about the avoidability of hospitalisation and death, it’s
really sad and tragic that most of these are avoidable and preventable.
“…
Obviously there are going to be some people, because of the variability
among people and their response to vaccine, that you’ll see some who
are vaccinated and still get into trouble and get hospitalised and die.
But the overwhelming proportion of people who get into trouble are the
unvaccinated. Which is the reason why we say this is really entirely
avoidable and preventable.”
Elsewhere, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, told Politico resistance to vaccines among evangelical Christians was “heartbreaking”.
“It’s
heartbreaking that it’s come to this over something that is potentially
lifesaving and yet has been so completely colored over by political
views and conspiracies that it’s impossible to have a simple loving
conversation with your flock,” said Collins, himself a devout Christian.
“That
is a sad diagnosis of the illness that afflicts our country, and I’m
not talking about Covid-19. I’m talking about polarisation, tribalism
even within what should be the loving community of a Christian church.”
On
NBC, Fauci was asked about this “clear political divide”. Calling the
coronavirus a “formidable enemy”, he said: “We do have a countermeasure
that’s highly, highly effective, that’s the reason why it’s all the more
sad and all the more tragic why it isn’t being completely implemented
in this country.
“And whatever the reasons,
some of them are ideologic, some of them are just fundamentally anti-vax
or anti-science or what have you. But, you know, we just need to put
that aside now. We’re dealing with a historic situation with this
pandemic. And we do have the tools to counter it. So for goodness’
sakes, put aside all of those differences and realise that the common
enemy is the virus. And we have a tool, a highly effective tool against
this virus.
“And we in our country are very
fortunate. We have enough vaccines to vaccinate essentially everybody in
the country. And there are people throughout the world who would do
anything to get vaccines.”
On Saturday, Dame Sarah Gilbert, an Oxford professor who led development of the AstraZeneca vaccine, told the Observer moves to vaccinate children in richer countries should be balanced against the need to extend access to adults worldwide.
“We
have to balance what we think about vaccinating children in high-income
countries with vaccinating the rest of the world because we need to
stop transmission of this virus globally,” Gilbert said.
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