America’s top doctor warned that anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID could face a tough winter as the colder season arrives and the virus continues to spread.
Nearly 80% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, but only two-thirds of Americans receive a second dose and less than half have received a booster dose, according to the CDC. data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“There are enough people who don’t fall in [high risk] kind of, that if they don’t get vaccinated, if they don’t get a booster, they’re going to be in trouble,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, told LA radio station “In Depth” by KNX on Tuesday.
Fauci said that while he understands that people are “burnt out” with the pandemic, studies and statistics clearly show that vaccines prevent severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths.
CDC study in June showed that the number of COVID-related hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults was 4.6 times higher than in vaccinated individuals.
Fauci also emphasized that high vaccination rates can help prevent new variants of the virus by slowing its spread, while long COVID is also a factor to consider when thinking about updating. Vaccine.
“People say: ‘the risk to me is low, so why is it? [vaccinated]? ‘”He says. “It’s about you as an individual, but it’s also the community’s responsibility to get this outbreak under control.”
He added: “You don’t want COVID to dominate people’s lives across this country or the world, but you don’t, by wishing it was behind us and it was in the rearview mirror, not in the rearview mirror. must do things with caution. .
“We’re not talking about lip-locking, we’re just talking about common sense, getting the right interventions when they’re available to you — and right now we have very effective enhancers in minimize any aspect of the infection.”
Sudden increase
Fauci told KNX it’s important to get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 because it’s “doing something we’ve never seen any other virus do” by continuing to evolve. into new variants that could have been avoided before. immune response.
“The durability of protection against infection is measured over several months, in contrast to measles, which is measured in decades, if not a lifetime,” he points out. “[With] polio, the durability of protection against reinfection once you’ve been infected or vaccinated is measured in decades, not months. It’s something we’ve never had to deal with.”
On August 2, the United States recorded 659 deaths from COVID-19 and 161,225 cases of the new virus, according to the CDC.
This week, the CDC said it has follow a new “variant of interest” known as BA.4.6, accounted for 4.1% of US COVID cases last week and was particularly common in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.
To date, there is little data on whether BA.4.6 is more transmissible than previous Omicron subvariables.
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