Ramping up of vaccinations offers ‘glimmer of hope’: Fauci
Sees goal of 100 million shots delivered in 100 days as realistic
The U.S. ramped up COVID-19 vaccinations in the past few days after a slower-than-expected kickoff, bringing to around four million the number of Americans who have received shots, government health officials said Sunday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, also said on ABC’s “This Week” that president-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to administer 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office is achievable.
And he rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s false claim on Twitter that coronavirus deaths and cases in the U.S. have been greatly exaggerated.
“All you need to do … is go into the trenches, go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The U.S. death toll has climbed past 350,000, the most of any country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, while more than 20 million people nationwide have been infected. States have reported record numbers of cases over the past few days, and funeral homes in Southern California are being inundated with bodies.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the pandemic is getting worse in his city as the virus spreads rapidly within households and people let their guard down. “This is a virus that preys off of our weakness, preys off of
our exhaustion,” he said.
Experts believe that the real numbers of U.S. deaths and infections are much higher and that many cases were overlooked, in part because of insufficient testing.
Fauci said he has seen “some little glimmer of hope” after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 per day, a marked increase in vaccinations. He said that brings the total to about four million.
He acknowledged the U.S. is well short of its goal of having 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. But he expressed optimism that the momentum will pick up by midJanuary and that ultimately the U.S. will be vaccinating one million people a day.
“The goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days is a realistic goal,” Fauci said.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development and dis
tribution effort, told CBS that 17.5 million doses have been shipped. About 13 million of those have been distributed to clinics, hospitals and other places where they will be administered, according to Fauci.
The 20 million-dose goal hasn’t been reached because local health departments and medical facilities had to stay focused on testing to handle a surge in cases, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said.
On Sunday morning, Trump falsely tweeted that the outbreak has been “far exaggerated” because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “ridiculous” methodology. He complained, too, that Fauci has been credited by the news media with doing “an incredible job” when Fauci “works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work.”
Fauci and others are warning that an additional surge is likely because of holiday gatherings and the cold weather keeping people indoors.