As many as 99.2 per cent of Covid-related deaths in the US were avoidable and preventable with vaccinations, the country’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has said.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Fauci said that vaccine response among people can be varied and some who are vaccinated may still get into trouble, get hospitalised and die, but the overwhelming proportion of people who get into trouble are unvaccinated ones.
“If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 per cent of them are unvaccinated. About 0.8 per cent are vaccinated,” Fauci was quoted as saying.
“No vaccine is perfect. But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalisation and death, it’s really sad and tragic that most of these are avoidable and preventable,” he lamented.
The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 33,716,933 and 605,526, respectively, according to the latest update by Johns Hopkins University on Monday.
The “disparity in the willingness to be vaccinated” has created “almost two types of America”, Fauci said. While there will not be a nationwide surge in cases, “it’s going to be regional”, he noted.
The country has about 50 per cent of the adult population that is fully vaccinated, while about 66-67 per cent of the adult population have at least one dose. More than 80 per cent of the elderly have been vaccinated. But there are some states where the level of vaccination of individuals is 35 per cent or less.
“As a nation as a whole, we are doing very well. Those regions of America, which are highly vaccinated have a low level of dynamics of infection. And in some places, some states, some cities, some areas, where the level of vaccination is low and the level of virus dissemination is high. That’s where you’re going to see the spikes,” Fauci said.
Urging people to get vaccinated, Fauci said that the Delta variant, first identified from India, is clearly more transmissible.
It is also more effective and efficient in its ability to transmit from person to person. Studies have shown it to be more lethal in the sense of more serious — “allow you to get more serious disease leading to hospitalization, and in some cases leading to deaths”, Fauci said.