(CNN) — Dr. Anthony Fauci said he would “settle” for a covid-19 vaccine that was 70% to 75% effective, but that this protection incomplete, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they will not receive a vaccine against coronavirus, makes it “unlikely” that U.S achieve sufficient levels of immunity to quell the outbreak.
With government support, three coronavirus vaccines are expected to be studied in large-scale clinical trials in the next three months.
“The best one we’ve done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It would be wonderful if we got there. I don’t think we will. I would settle for an effective vaccine at 70, 75% ”.
A CNN poll last month found that a third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against covid-19, even if the vaccine is widely available and inexpensive.
In an interview on Friday, CNN asked Fauci if a vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy taken by only two-thirds of the population would provide collective immunity to the coronavirus.
“No, unlikely,” he replied.
Group immunity occurs when a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease, either from previous disease or vaccination, making it unlikely to spread from person to person.
Coronavirus Vaccine Education Effort ‘Won’t Be Easy’
Fauci pointed out that “there is a general feeling of anti-science, anti-authority and anti-vaccine among some people in this country; an alarmingly high percentage of people, relatively speaking. “
He said that given the power of the anti-vaccine movement, “we have a lot of work to do” to educate people about the truth about vaccines.
“It won’t be easy,” he said. “Anyone who thinks it will be easy does not face reality. It will be very difficult”.
Fauci said the government has an educational program to counter messages against vaccines.
“We have a program right now that is going to be extended to reach the community,” he said. “They may not like a government person in a suit like me being told, although I will tell them. They really need to see people they can relate to in the community: sports figures, community heroes, people they admire. ”
But there is no indication that such a program has been implemented.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) administers many federal health education programs, but agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund referred CNN to the Department of U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), which runs Operation Warp Speed, the Trump Administration’s effort to develop a covid-19 vaccine.
In an email, Michael Caputo, a HHS spokesman, did not confirm the existence of a vaccine education campaign, adding that he “would hate to see CNN post [una] tremendously wrong story. ”
The states’ ratings
Fauci made his comments on the vaccines during a lengthy interview with CNN that was part of the Aspen Festival of Ideas and aired Sunday night.
When asked how he would rate the country for managing the coronavirus outbreak, Fauci said that some states were better off than others.
“Some states would have A +. Some would have A and some would have below C somewhere, ”he said.
He singled out New York for doing “really well,” but declined to name states with “C.”
“There are some states where leadership and decision [de abrirse] they were too hasty, ”he said. “There are others where the leadership did well, but the public did not listen to them.”
Fauci said that in states where people can be seen gathering up close without wearing masks, “that’s a recipe for disaster.”
He added that he understands that people, especially young people, want to be together after months of confinement. He warned those people that “they are not in a vacuum.”
“The fact that you have been infected means that you are likely to be infecting someone else who could infect someone else who will then infect a vulnerable person,” Fauci said. ” That person could be someone’s uncle, aunt, grandmother, a child with immunosuppressed leukemia. All those people who are in serious danger of having a bad result. ”
Contact tracking doesn’t work well, says Fauci
Until there is a vaccine, one key to controlling the virus is contact tracing, the public health practice of trying to contain an outbreak by isolating infected people, asking them who they have had contact with while they were infectious, and then quarantining those contacts.
When asked how his contact tracking is going to the United States, Fauci replied, “I don’t think we’re doing very well.”
“If you go to the community and call and say, ‘How’s contact tracing going?’, The dots aren’t connected because much of it is done over the phone. You make a contact, 50% of the people, because they come from an authority, they don’t even want to talk to you, “he said.
Fauci recommended that the communities “mobilize and go out to look for people, instead of getting on the phone and doing the supposed tracking of contacts by phone.”
But he added that contact tracing is hampered by the fact that many people infected with coronaviruses have no symptoms, and since they don’t know they are sick, it is impossible to trace their contacts.
He said that in areas where the virus is spreading in the community, 20% to 40% of those infected are asymptomatic.
“When there is community spread, it is somewhat harmful because there are many people in the community who are infected but are asymptomatic,” he said. ” So the classic standard paradigm of identification, isolation, contact tracking doesn’t work, no matter how well you do it because you don’t know who you’re tracking. ”
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