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NEW YORK: The United States should stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease official, told the Washington Post.
Fauci said delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risks.
He warned that switching to a single-dose strategy for vaccines could leave people less protected, allow the variants to spread and possibly increase skepticism among Americans who are already hesitant to receive the injections.
“There are risks on both sides,” Fauci was quoted as saying by the Washington Post in a report published last night.
“We tell people (two shots) what to do and then we say, ‘Whoops, we change our minds.’ Fauci said. “I think it would be a messaging challenge, to say the least.”
He added that he spoke with UK health officials on Monday, who opted to delay second doses to maximize the delivery of the vaccines to more people more quickly. Fauci said that strategy would not make sense in the United States.
He said science does not support delaying a second dose of those vaccines, citing research that a two-shot regimen creates enough protection to help defend against variants of the coronavirus that are more transmissible, while a single shot could leave Americans in risk of variants such as that first detected in South Africa.
“You don’t know how long that protection is,” he said.
Fauci said Sunday that he was encouraging Americans to accept any of the three available Covid-19 vaccines, including the recently approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The US government authorized Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine on Saturday, making it the third to be available in the country after those from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna that require two doses.
Covid-19 has claimed more than half a million lives in the United States, and states are crying out for more doses to stop cases, hospitalizations and deaths. – Reuters
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