“We cannot let our guard down.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, hasn’t had a day off in 27 months — since the U.S. was first bombarded by Covid-19. And, as he tells Katie in a new interview, he doesn’t expect to be taking any time off soon. The U.S. is likely facing another surge in cases fueled by BA.2, a highly contagious subvariant of Omicron that’s led to a steep rise in infections throughout Western Europe, Dr. Fauci says.
“I believe that even though we’re seeing things go down, we cannot let our guard down,” he says.
He spoke to Katie about the threat of the subvariant, whether the U.S. is prepared to handle a new surge, if a fourth shot for the under-50 set could be authorized soon, and more. Check out some excerpts from the interview and watch a video of their full discussion below.
Katie Couric: What is the state of affairs when it comes to the coronavirus right now?
Dr. Fauci: We are in an interesting phase right now. We’re seeing a continuation of the diminution of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Yesterday, the deaths were within the 600s, as opposed to 3,000 or 2,000 a day several months ago.
One of the things that we have to keep an eye on is how things are progressing in Western Europe, particularly in the U.K. What goes on there generally happens here several weeks later. They’re seeing a surge in cases — and the reason is threefold. One is the BA.2 variant. It’s a bit more transmissible than BA.1, the Omicron variant, and has become quite dominant throughout the world. Number two is that many countries have opened up, in that they’re no longer requiring masking in indoor settings. And they’re having the same sort of waning immunity that we’re seeing here — merely because after several months, the vaccination effect tends to diminish. All of that is accounting for a surge of in cases, fortunately without a concomitant, significant increase in hospitalizations.
So we can expect over the next couple of weeks that we are gonna see a surge in cases. Hopefully, there is enough background immunity — meaning enough people who have already been vaccinated and boosted as well as people who have been infected and recovered — so that even though there are new infections, we won’t see a significant increase in hospitalizations.
Let’s talk about Hong Kong: It was startling to read that more than 90 percent of all deaths linked to the virus since the pandemic began in Hong Kong happened in the last 30 days. Is that an anomaly? What is happening there?
It is certainly an anomaly, and for a couple of reasons. First of all, the vaccine uptake there is not as good. And they predominantly use the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccine, which are Chinese-made and with all due respect, are not nearly as effective as the ones that are being used here in the U.S. The other thing is Hong Kong dramatically locked down and adopted a no-Covid-tolerance stance. There’s good news and bad news about that. The good news is that you temporarily don’t see a lot of spread and people don’t get infected. But that also means they have less background immunity, so when you open up and there’s a new variant that comes in, it explodes. That’s really what we’re seeing there.
As more states relax restrictions and as vaccine and testing sites start to be dismantled, are you worried about the pandemic infrastructure, and that it won’t be able to handle another uptick in cases?
As I’ve said in the past, Katie, I believe that even though we’re seeing things go down, we cannot let our guard down.
We shouldn’t pull back and say it’s all over and stop continuing to do the things that are important, like testing, vaccinating, boosting, and getting people who do get infected the drugs to treat the infection early on. This is why the new covid.gov website that the president announced yesterday is very important, because it’s a one-stop-shop situation where you go online and you can locate the 2,000 sites that have test and treat. If you go to a site and test positive, you immediately get treated right there. And that’s really important, because the earlier you treat people, the better effect those antiviral drugs have.
Sixty-five percent of the population has been vaccinated. Is that a number we’re just gonna have to accept and live with at this point?
I would love to say no. But first of all, we’re gonna have to accept what is. It’s really unfortunate that we’ve reached this point. That there’s such a pushback against a vaccine that is clearly highly effective and very safe. If you look at the number of new vaccinations among people who haven’t been vaccinated, it’s very, very low. So you’re right. We might have to accept that, but we shouldn’t give up trying.
Should people over 50 get the booster ASAP? And what about people under 50 getting the green light for the booster?
A lot of data from Israel indicates that when you give people above a certain age a fourth booster, there is an advantage of preventing hospitalization and ultimately death. So I would say that even though it isn’t a strong recommendation, it’s very clear that there is an advantage. If I take off my public-health hat and put on my physician hat, and I had someone come in and say, “I’m 55 years old and concerned. I want to get myself the added benefit of more protection.” I would recommend that if they were in that category, that they get vaccinated, particularly since the vaccines are so safe.
What about a 45-year-old?
Right now, there’s no real firm data to indicate that when you go down that low there’s a significant benefit. But on April 6, the advisory committee to the FDA is gonna meet to look at the long-range strategy around where we are going with boosters as we get into the fall, before the next winter. So it is quite conceivable — though I’m not jumping ahead of them — that they might actually recommend that by the time we get into the fall, everybody should wind up getting a fourth boost.
When can children under 5 expect a vaccine and what do you think has taken so long to approve it?
Right now, the reason we don’t have that determination is that they’re still collecting data. It was thought that for children, this would be a two-dose vaccine. And when the preliminary data came out, it was clear that it didn’t meet the endpoint we wanted it to meet. There was no doubt it was safe — that’s not an issue. The question is, what is the right dose and dose regimen?
Is this going to be the new normal? Are we going to see this particular virus continue to mutate and present itself in new shapes and forms of varying severity?
I have to be perfectly frank and honest with you: We don’t know. This virus is extraordinary. It’s fooled us multiple times. Given its high degree of transmissibility and the fact that it is truly global, there’s no doubt that we’re not gonna be able to eradicate it. We’ve only eradicated one viral pathogen of importance and that’s smallpox. But smallpox doesn’t change very much. It’s a pretty stable virus, and we had a very successful global vaccination campaign.
The next step is, will we eliminate it from the country? That is very unlikely given the transmissibility, and that we don’t have a universal acceptance of vaccines the way we did with polio and measles — which we have eliminated from this country with few exceptions.
The best we can do is what I refer to as control. But make sure it’s controlled at a very, very low level so that it doesn’t impact us the way it has impacted us over the last two years — interfering with everything from the economy, to social interaction, to a variety of other aspects of our lives. If we get it low enough where it’s just not really causing severe cases that are alarming anymore than any other virus, that’s where we would want to be. We wanna eliminate it, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Katie.
Paxlovid, Pfizer’s new antiviral pill, has proven highly effective in keeping higher-risk people out of the hospital. What can you tell us about that?
It’s a very good drug. If given within the first three to five days of infection, it’s about 90 percent effective in preventing severe disease leading to hospitalizations and deaths. We’ve contracted for a significant amount of it. We need to get more people, more physicians to realize that this is an important added benefit to patients, who might otherwise wind up in the hospital.
Watch Katie’s interview with Dr. Fauci right here:
