President Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci clarified the President’s estimate of widespread COVID-19 vaccine availability to the public in the spring during an interview on Fox News Tuesday morning.
During an event on Monday focused on American manufacturing, Biden expressed confidence that COVID-19 vaccines would be widely available in the spring, and he believes the country will be headed toward herd immunity by summer.
On Tuesday, Fauci was pressed on Fox News on Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine projection for the spring as well as Biden COVID-19 adviser David Kessler’s projection shared on SiriusXM of widespread vaccine availability in the “third or fourth quarter” of the year.
Fauci said that he doesn’t think “there really is as apparent of discrepancy as what you might think” as he clarified Biden’s projection. The nation’s top infectious disease expert said that by April it will be “open season” for COVID-19 vaccine availability.
“What you’re talking about is if you go through the priority areas — the 1A, 1B and 1C. You know 1A is health care providers, people in nursing homes and those who take care of them and you go on and on,” Fauci said. “By the time you get to April, you would have gotten to the point where I refer to it for simplicity as ‘open season.’ Mainly, you are at that point that wherever you are in a priority you can start getting the doses.”
Fauci added that it will take several months before everyone who wants to get the COVID-19 vaccine doses will receive them, which he estimates will go into the end of the summer.
“I have been saying that probably by the end of the summer you could get everybody vaccinated,” Fauci said. “But the availability for people in any category will likely be by April.”
Watch Fauci’s remarks below:
Fauci on COVID-19 vaccine availability: "By the time you get to April, you would have gotten to the point where I refer to it for simplicity as 'open season.'" pic.twitter.com/jLeN23P88z
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) January 26, 2021
