Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the coronavirus task force, said the United States is heading “in the wrong direction” for the pandemic, at a time when coronavirus cases are increasing among the country’s unvaccinated population.
“An epidemic among the unvaccinated is forming in the United States,” Fauci said Sunday (25/7), in an interview with CNN.
“I’m very disappointed,” Fauci said, after the CNN anchor provided data from a poll, noting that 80% of Americans vaccinated so far would, or certainly not, accept the vaccination.
“I don’t like blaming people because it makes them back off more,” the doctor continued. “But I would like to see more (political) leaders from low-vaccinated areas encouraging people to get vaccinated. We need to do better,” he said. People are putting themselves in needless distress” due to the high risk of taking Covid-19 and developing health complications.
The moving average of cases over the past seven days is up 53% in the US from the previous week, and 80% of cases are delta, which is more contagious. According to Reuters, some hospitals in the United States have again reached the limits of their capacity.
To date, more than 162.7 million people – or 49% of the US population – have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to official data. The United States led the pace of global immunization until April, when immunization rates began to lose momentum.
Immunization rates are particularly low in the southern states of the country, where less than half of the population received the first dose.
The largest increases in the number of cases also occurred in southern or midwestern states such as Florida, Texas and Missouri.
Earlier last week, expert Vivek Murthy stated that 99.5% of COVID-19 deaths in the country were occurring among unvaccinated groups.
According to Anthony Fauci – a White House adviser in the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations – health officials are considering the possibility of reviewing permission granted to vaccinated people to stop wearing masks. It will be an effort to try to contain more sharp rises in cases.
For now, CDC (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines state that fully vaccinated people can “resume their activities as before the pandemic, without wearing masks.”
Fauci said, however, that governors can issue their own guidelines based on local realities.
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