Daily US Times: Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci predicts a Covid-19 vaccine that’s 70% to 75% effective, will not be effective in the country. He said that this incomplete protection, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they won’t get a coronavirus vaccine, makes it “unlikely” that the United States will achieve herd immunity to quell the outbreak.
In the next three months, with government support, three coronavirus vaccines are expected to be studied in large-scale clinical trials.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said: “The best we’ve ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective.”
“That would be wonderful if we get there. I don’t think we will. I would settle for [a] 70, 75% effective vaccine,” he added.
A CNN poll last month found one-third of US citizens said they would not try to get Covid-19 vaccine, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.
Fauci was asked in an interview on Friday whether a vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy taken by only two-thirds of the population would provide herd immunity to the coronavirus.
“No — unlikely,” he answered.
Herd immunity means a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease, either vaccination or through prior illness, so that spread from person to person unlikely.
Fauci pointer that there is a general anti-authority, anti-science, anti-vaccine feeling among some people in this country — an alarmingly large percentage of people, relatively speaking.”
“We have a lot of work to do” to educate people on the truth about vaccines,” he said adding that ‘it is not going to be easy”.
“Anyone [who] thinks it will be easy is not facing reality. It’s going to be very difficult.”
The government has a vaccine education program to counteract anti-vaccine messages, Fauci said.
“They may not like a government person in a suit like me telling them, even though I will tell them,” he said.
”They really need to see people that they can relate to in the community — sports figures, community heroes, people that they look up to.”
There are many federal health education programs are run by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund referred to the US Department of Health and Human Services, which runs Operation Warp Speed, the Trump Administration effort to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.
HHS spokesman Michael Caputo did not confirm the existence of a vaccine education campaign.
Fauci said some states were doing better than others when asked what grade he would give the country for handling the coronavirus outbreak.
He said: “Some states are going to be A+. Some are going to be A and some are going to be down in C somewhere.”
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