Dr Anthony Fauci made the rounds of the morning TV news shows Sunday, trying to quell confusion over the latest federal pandemic guidance for the start of school in the fall as well as growing questions about the necessity of booster shots.
On Sunday, Israel’s Health Ministry announced that it would begin offering boosters to adults with weakened immune systems who already had two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in light of the rising number of cases there caused by the Delta variant. The news was first reported by Reuters.
Asked about the development on CNN’s State of the Union, Fauci emphasised that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was committed to following the science and said that boosters were not recommended “right now,” given that more than 90% of Covid-related new hospitalisations were in unvaccinated patients.
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But he did not rule out the possibility that boosters might eventually be advisable for certain populations.
Pfizer and BioNTech announced last week that they were developing a vaccine targeted to the Delta variant and also had promising results from studies of people who received a booster shot.
But Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on the CBS program Face the Nation that federal agencies were doing their own research on the booster question.
On Friday, the CDC released new guidelines for school reopenings that included a list of options about face masks, social distancing and ventilation. But in emphasising that the top priority should be a return to in-person classroom education, the agency said that not every item had to be fulfilled and that local jurisdictions should issue their own guidance.
Fauci deflected criticism that the CDC appeared to be flip-flopping with its successive guidelines. He said local districts had to be nimble in responding to their own situations.
“If you can’t implement them, you should still do everything you can with testing, with guidelines that would allow people, for example, in lunchrooms when you gather, when you’re sick don’t come to school, do everything you can to keep the in-person classes going,” he said on the ABC program This Week.