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NEW YORK: Herd immunity to the novel coronavirus may require vaccination rates “between 70% and 90%,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s foremost infectious disease expert, in an interview published Thursday (Dec. 24).
More than 1 million Americans have received a first dose of a vaccine since December 14, according to the US Centers for Disease Control, or just about 0.3 percent of the population.
Fauci, who is advising both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden on the pandemic, acknowledged that he had gradually increased his estimates since the beginning of the year, when he used to say that only 60 to 70 percent should be inoculated to achieve immunity. collective.
“We need to have some humility here,” Fauci told the New York Times. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is between 70% and 90%. But I’m not going to say 90%.”
His comments came as the country marks grim new daily milestones as it grapples with the world’s deadliest outbreak: it reported more than 3,000 deaths for the second day in a row on Wednesday. The death toll in the United States reached 326,333 at midnight Wednesday, according to Reuters data.
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More Americans flew that same day than any other day since the pandemic emerged in March, with 1,191,123 passengers passing through airport checkpoints, according to data from the US Transportation Security Administration.
The data suggested that many were ignoring advice from public health experts to avoid traveling to celebrate Christmas Day on Friday. Fauci and other experts say social distancing will be necessary well into 2021 as vaccines slowly roll out.
The number of travelers dropped from 2019, when 1,937,235 flew in on December 23. Wednesday’s traffic surpassed the previous high of the pandemic era set on November 29, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday, when 1,176,091 people passed through TSA checkpoints, before new coronavirus surges. cases in many states.
Healthcare workers, nursing home residents, elected officials and firefighters are among the first to get vaccinated. Most Americans have been told that it could take six months or more before they are eligible for vaccines.
Fauci, who was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, said in the interview that he had become more willing to reveal his beliefs, as polls show that Americans are becoming somewhat less skeptical about the new vaccines. .
The more infectious a disease is, the higher the vaccination rate required to reach a herd immunity threshold, in which its spread is contained.
“When the polls said that only half of Americans would get vaccinated, I was saying that herd immunity would drop from 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci, who turned 80 on Thursday, told the Times.
“Then when the most recent polls said 60 percent or more would accept it, I thought, ‘I can increase this a little bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”
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