Fauci on Coronavirus Vaccinations: ‘We Are Below Where We Want to Be’

Tuesday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci weighed in on the underwhelming amount of coronavirus vaccinations taken with just a few days remaining in 2020. Around 2 million Americans have received the vaccine, which is just a drop in the bucket of the goal of 20 million vaccinations U.S. officials had in mind by the end of the year.

Fauci suggested on CNN’s “New Day” that there could be some undercount going on, but he believes there will be “an increase in momentum” to catch up to the projected pace to have enough people vaccinated to turn things around.

“We certainly are not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December,” Fauci advised. “You heard talking about 40 million doses for 20 million people. I mean, even if … 2 million is an undercount, how much undercount could it be? So, we are below where we want to be.”

“I believe that as we get into January, we are going to see an increase in the momentum, which, Jim, I hope allows us to catch up to the projected pace that we had spoken about a month or two ago when we were talking about the planned rollout of vaccinations because we really want to get those priority people vaccinated so that we can then get to what we call open season for the general population,” he added. “What we are doing now is certainly saving lives — no doubt about that — but when you get to the point where you can essentially say anybody and everybody who wants to be vaccinated can be vaccinated, that’s when you really turn around the dynamics of the outbreak.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent