Arguably the nation’s most public face in the fight against the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday he has even more concerns about the virus’ spread over Christmas than he did about Thanksgiving because it’s a longer holiday.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN he hopes “people realize that and understand that as difficult as this is, nobody wants to modify – if not essentially shut down – their holiday season, but we are in a very critical time in this country right now. We’ve got to not walk away from the facts and the data. This is tough going for all of us.”
The Christmas holidays begin several days before Dec. 25 and usually last through New Year’s Day.
Fauci is set to become President-elect Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. Biden also has reportedly chosen Dr. Rochelle Walensky to become the new head of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. continues approaching 200,000 reported coronavirus cases per day, as national health officials continue warning Americans not to let their guard down during this latest, long-predicted fall pandemic surge.
As of Monday, the U.S. continues to lead the world in the number of cases — 14.7 million — and deaths, with more than 282,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News people are “not minding the three W’s. “Our advice is always the same. Wash your hands, watch your distance, wear face coverings.”
As of Sunday, the U.S. had averaged a record-high 196,233 new cases during the last week, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins data. Also Sunday, 101,487 patients were in the hospital with the virus, the fifth straight day the U.S. surpassed 100,000 hospitalizations, also according to a CNN analysis.
On Thursday, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to take up a request to authorize emergency use of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. Vaccinations could begin just days later, though initial supplies will be rationed, and shots are not expected to become widely available until the spring.
Deaths per day have surged to an average of more than 2,160, a level last seen during April, when the outbreak was centered around New York. The number of Americans in the hospital with the coronavirus topped 100,000 for the first time during the last few days.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, warned on CBS’ “Face the Nation” the U.S. death toll could approach 400,000 by the end of January. “As bad as things are right now,” he said, “they’re going to get a lot worse.”
Azar also told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos the holiday season might have more devastation in store.
“We’re worried about people and the behaviors coming up with Christmas,” he said. “We want to make sure everyone’s loved ones are there next Christmas, especially when we have so much hope of vaccines.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that health care workers and nursing home patients get priority when the first shots become available.
Both Pfizer’s vaccine and a Moderna vaccine that will also be reviewed by the FDA later this month require two doses a few weeks apart. Current estimates project that a combined total of no more than 40 million doses will be available by the end of the year. The plan is to use those to fully vaccinate 20 million people.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development program, suggested on CBS that using those 40 million doses more broadly to reach 40 million people right away would be too risky, because of the possibility of manufacturing delays that could hold up the necessary second doses.
“It would be inappropriate to partially immunize large numbers of people and not complete their immunization,” he said.
But Gottlieb said he would push out as many doses as possible, taking “a little bit of a risk” that the supply would catch up in time for people to get a second dose.
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