Get used to it, folks
Fauci raises possibility of yearly COVID booster shots
Annual vaccine booster shots are a possibility in America’s battle against the COVID pandemic, the country’s top infectious disease expert said Sunday.
Boosters provide the “optimal” level of protection, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser, said on ABC’s “This Week.” Asked about the possible necessity of annual COVID vaccine booster shots, Fauci said, “It’s tough to tell.”
“If it becomes necessary to get yet another boost, then we’ll just have to deal with it when that occurs,” he said.
Fauci, who also is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added that he hoped one booster for the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot will do the job.
U.S. authorities began rolling out booster shots in August amid evidence that vaccines become less effective over time.
Last week, 16- and 17-year-olds who received the Pfizer vaccine became the latest group eligible for booster shots, under authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Some health officials have been discussing whether to make booster shots the criterion for what is considered full vaccination.
Fauci said the feds will still consider someone fully vaccinated with two shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but he said a booster is the best bet.
“I think if you look at the data, the more and more it becomes clear that if you want to be optimally protected, you really should get a booster,” he said.
The U.S. is looking at yet another grim pandemic benchmark this holiday season.
The death toll inflicted by the virus hovered around 800,000 as of Sunday, with more than 1,000 COVID deaths being reported every day.
Reuters declared the 800,000 benchmark had been passed.
Other outlets and organizations had slightly lower numbers: 797,179 according to Johns Hopkins University, 795,727 according to The New York Times and 793,937 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But with the dire daily death rate being cited by several trackers, the country is poised to top the 800,000 mark this year.
Cases and hospitalizations have been rising around the country, while experts fear the latest variant of the virus, the omicron strain, could prove to be more resistant to vaccines than were previous variants.
Nearly two years into the pandemic in the U.S., where the first coronavirus case was detected in January 2020, Fauci was asked about “COVID fatigue.”
“On that framework alone, just vaccination, we can go a long way to getting us through this cold winter season, which clearly is always associated with a spike in respiratory illnesses,” he said.
“You know, masking is not going to be forever, but it can get us out of the very difficult situation we’re in now,” he said.
Across the pond, the spread of the omicron variant prompted the U.K. to raise its COVID alert system to Level 4 from Level 3 on its five-tier system.
Level 3 means the virus is in general circulation, while Level 4 means transmission is rising “exponentially” and Level 5 means health services are at risk of being overwhelmed.
In spite of the heightened alert, the U.K. was not expected to announce new restrictions on daily life.