A year after the first COVID-19 case in the region, dr. Anthony Fauci talks to WTOP about what has been learned, the country’s prospects, vaccines, how the virus surprised him and more.
Friday marks the anniversary of the first COVID-19 case in the DC area, with a case popping up in Maryland (with DC and Virginia both reporting their first cases two days later).
It was a year of lockdown, illness and death, and dr. Anthony Fauci spoke to WTOP about what has been learned, the prospects for the country, vaccinations, how the virus surprised him and more.
Asked to make sure Americans know what the fight against the virus is a year later, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said: ‘I want them to should know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, especially since we have multiple, very effective vaccines. ”
The most important recent development, of course, is the launch of three COVID-19 vaccines in the US, from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. Fauci said you should take any vaccine you can get.
“The most important thing is to get yourself vaccinated and protected,” Fauci told WTOP. “Do not wait to see which one is better than the other; are vaccinated as quickly as possible. … Honestly, these are safe vaccines. ”
While some people worry about who has the highest efficiency rating, it seems that all are almost 100% effective in preventing serious illness and death, which is the most important. Fauci said all the vaccinations are safe.
Fauci added that the number of vaccine doses available soon will explode soon. In addition to launching the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the federal government has contracted another 100 million doses of both Pfizer and Moderna.
‘At present, the total, with Moderna and Pfizer alone, is 600 million doses for 300 million people. That does not even count J&J, and the possibility that other vaccines may come online. ”
These are many doses.
“We did it on purpose to be redundant in case something went wrong,” Fauci said. ‘And if that does not happen, you will have more than you need. And then we will decide what we want to do with it. ”
Even with vaccines, Fauci warned that ‘this is not the time to retreat to social measures. This is completely understandable – I feel it myself: you want to return to some form of normality; it will come relatively soon. … But the better we do with the suppression of the virus, the faster we become normal. What we do not want to do is to jump on the bandwagon prematurely and to abandon all social measures. ”
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After a vaccine
After you have been vaccinated, Fauci said, you should continue with safe practices to protect other people. The vaccine may prevent you from getting sick, but it is believed that you can still transmit the virus to other people. (More studies are being done to confirm this, he said.)
But if you want to have a meeting with a few people who have also been vaccinated: ‘You may feel comfortable getting together in the vicinity of a house – you know, a little reception, a little dinner or a social event where you ‘re in the house. ”
He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have official and comprehensive guidance on it in a few days.
It is not yet known, Fauci said, whether COVID-19 would even be an annual event with the vaccine, similar to the flu.
“In the first place, you want to make sure you get the vast majority of the population vaccinated,” and that would require communication about the vaccines to overcome hesitation, Fauci said.
The other question is the number and strength of variants emerging around the world. According to him, the best solution to the second problem is to be vaccinated as quickly as possible, “because viruses do not mutate if they do not recur.”
A pandemic year
While the first cases were in the region a year ago, a few days later the main warning signs started.
There were ‘many signs from China’ early last year about the severity of the virus, Fauci said, ‘but it was difficult to find out what was going on because they were completely shut down’ and information was difficult to obtain. .
When it spread to Europe, it was easier to see the “destructiveness” of the virus. “I believe it was on March 11, if I am not mistaken, that it became clear that we were really having a lot of trouble,” Fauci said.
From there, the virus spread rapidly.
“First, in the northeastern part of the country dominated by the metropolitan area of New York; when we tried to open up the economy, namely to open up certain parts of the country, we did not comply with the public health measures well, and we still had a big boom, mostly in the southern states. After that it is to the heartland and North West. And then we realized that there is no part of the country that was safe. ‘
And the political climate did not help, he said, referring to the resistance that many people had to do such as wearing masks – ‘some people call it fake news and a joke, while killing half a million people. … We have a common enemy; let us all rally against that common enemy instead of insisting on each other. ”
Now that vaccines are here, Fauci’s appearance of normal life is not that far off, and he added that he was more optimistic than most of the day when such a day would dawn.
‘It was a moving target’
While schools are starting to reopen for personal education, Fauci said he and many experts were surprised to learn that the spread in schools is not as severe as feared, especially among younger children. He acknowledges “the efforts of the school systems, the teachers and the teaching staff, as well as the children – to put on masks and understand the seriousness of it and not come together in areas where they usually do.”
The vaccines and the practices at school promise to fall well, he said: “By the fall, we must hope that a very large part of the population will already be vaccinated.”
On what went wrong with the prediction about schools, Fauci said: ‘Well, that was a gripping target; it is not as if we knew everything about transferability in school, ”especially in a time of great community.
‘Ya-ya land’
‘In January (2020), when we first started working on the vaccine, and people asked me when I thought we would have a vaccine, I said it would be – I do not know, between 12 and 18 months not. People thought I was somewhere in ya-ya country and thought you were going to do it in less than a few years. And as it turns out, it was even better than my prediction. We had a virus vaccine in people’s arms within 11 months. ”
He said it happened for a number of reasons, one of which was grim: ‘Not just the extraordinary nature of scientific progress, but the fact that we had so much contagion in the community, that we could get a result from the trial very quickly, as opposed to years of smoldering disease to get an answer. ”
WTOP’s Mike Murillo contributed to this report.