Fauci
© National GeographicDr. Anthony Fauci
Top US infectious diseases expert tells Telegraph he 'hopes' pandemic will be over by spring but there's 'no guarantee' after delta variant

Three shots will come to be viewed as the necessary requirement to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, Dr Anthony Fauci has told The Telegraph. The comments by America's top infectious diseases expert represented backing for the UK's decision to start rolling out booster shots to over-50s.

It came as the US Food and Drug Administration's advisory panel, in a shock move on Friday night, rejected a plan to offer Pfizer booster shots to Americans over the age of 16. They later voted in favour of authorising boosters of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine for everyone aged 65 and over.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Dr Fauci said:
"I believe, when all's said and done, it's going to turn out that the proper regimen, at least for an mRNA vaccine [like Pfizer], is the two original doses, the prime followed in three-to-four weeks by a boost, but also followed several months later by a third shot.

"So I think that ultimately, when we look back on this, it's going to be that the proper regimen, to have a complete and full regimen, will be a third shot boost. I'm favourably disposed to boosts based on the waning of immunity, as we're seeing very, very clearly as time goes on, in the data in the US [and] even more dramatic data from our Israeli colleagues.

"[There is] some indication of waning in the UK, which is the reason why the UK has, or will soon be, vaccinating people 50 years of age and older, as well as healthcare providers and those who are immuno-compromised."
Dr Fauci said it was not yet clear if children would need a third shot. He said:
"We don't know that. I think it's too early to make that determination."
Could babies be next?

As the UK approved 12- to 15-year-olds to have a single shot of the Pfizer vaccine, Dr Fauci also detailed how he believed children as young as five in the US would be getting vaccinated by late autumn. He said the vaccination of children aged between six months and five years would happen "likely some time after".

Dr Fauci acknowledged that giving a Covid-19 vaccine to children
"at that younger age is not uniformly agreed upon around the world. We are planning, and are doing, the clinical studies right now to extend the vaccination.

"The data we are collecting on the children in the clinical trial, from 11 to five, will likely be available for evaluation by our regulatory authorities by mid-fall, I would say some time around October, November.

"So, it looks like we will be vaccinating children before the end of the year down to five-years-old, if our regulatory authorities give us the go-ahead."
Dr Fauci said concerns about health impacts on children were "the reasons we do clinical trials".

The main concern with the Covid-19 vaccine has been myocarditis. But he said that was generally seen in children aged over 12 and into young adulthood.
"Although we don't expect in the very younger children that we're going to see it, we're still going to do the studies for safety.

"My feeling is this, if we can establish the safety element of it, and the risk benefit ratio weighs heavily on the benefit, I certainly would be in favour of it.

"But I want to reserve my opinion until we see the data, and the regulatory authorities examine the data carefully."
Dr Fauci supported masks mandates in schools saying, firstly, children should be
"surrounded with people who are vaccinated. But that doesn't necessarily seem to be enough so, superimposed upon all that, what we've done in the US is strongly recommend there be mask mandates."
Dr Fauci said mandating vaccines for children was
"subject of considerable controversy and concern and is still being discussed. There has been no decision on it. You know, mandating vaccines for kids in schools is not a new phenomenon. We do that all the time with other vaccines, for example measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, polio. So, the idea of mandating vaccines for children in schools is not unique to Covid-19. It depends on the risk to children. We're in the middle of a devastating outbreak. We've had 650,000 deaths in the United States, and we're still having about 120,000 new infections a day. We're in the middle of a very serious situation here in the United States."
'Disappointment' at anti-vaxxers

Dr Fauci said he was "disappointed" by the huge number of Americans who remain unvaccinated.
"Well, I'm disappointed. In some respects I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed.

"You know, in the United States it's become a bit of a political issue. If you look at the map of the United States the under-vaccinated regions are very heavily red states, or Republican areas.

"Where the areas that are more thoroughly vaccinated are very heavily blue states, which are Democratic states. That's an interesting phenomenon. You would not think that the distribution of vaccination take up would be so heavily weighted on political ideology.

"That's something that's unusual, and really should not be, because this is a public health issue not a political issue."
Amid warnings of potential "doomsday" or "monster" variant of Covid-19 developing over the winter, Dr Fauci said people not getting vaccinated was giving the virus the opportunity to mutate.

He said:
"When it mutates you have the possibility it will be an accumulation of mutants that will be leading to a new variant, which could be worse than the delta variant.

"In the United States we have about 72- or 73 million people eligible for vaccination who have not yet been vaccinated, and that's really unfortunate because that is a perfect set-up to developing mutants that are going to lead to variants that could be problematic."

Comment: Four words: 'Herd Immunity' - 'Flu over'.


He said this winter the US was
"looking at the same thing the UK is looking at - we don't know what's going to happen with the influenza season. We certainly want to get people to take the influenza vaccine in order to diminish the possibility of having conflating infections going on at the same time."
When will it end?

As to when the pandemic will end, he said:
"I think we all have to be very honest and open and humble. We don't know.

"This virus has fooled us multiple times with multiple different waves throughout the world in general, and each individual country, including the US and UK."
He hoped it would be spring next year, but added:
"That's just hoping, it's aspirational, whether it happens or not remains to be seen. This has been a very disturbing experience we've all had, where we would have expected to be out of it, then you get a new variant.

"In the United States, as we approached the summer, we were way down on cases on a daily basis, and then along came the big surprise of the delta variant, and that just knocked us for a loop.

"And now we're back at 130, 140 thousand cases a day. So I'm reluctant to make any firm predictions about what's going to happen."