Dr. Anthony Fauci is predicting when the United States could have herd immunity to COVID-19.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), herd immunity is a “situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely.”
During a news conference with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) Tuesday, Fauci said he believes vaccines will be available for the general population in April.
“Once we get there, we can crush this outbreak, just the way we did with smallpox, with polio and with measles. So we can do it, we just need to hang together a bit longer,” Fauci said.
He added, “Because, not only Colorado but so many states are at the brink of being overrun with regard to their capability of taking care of people in a proper way, particularly in intensive care.”
Fauci predicted the nation could “very likely… have [an] overwhelming majority of the people vaccinated” by the end of the second quarter of 2021.
This means the nation “would have herd immunity that would allow you to safely get people back to school in the fall, to safely get people back to the kinds of work that would otherwise be difficult as you get to the middle and the end of the summer. So it’s going to start in April, and it’s going to go right through the end of the second quarter of 2021.”
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The U.S. Transportation Department has prepared for “immediate mass shipment” of the coronavirus vaccines, as IJR previously reported.
It has established “appropriate safety requirements for all potential hazards involved in shipping the vaccine, including standards for dry ice and lithium batteries used in cooling.”
On Monday, the United States reported at least 1,265 new coronavirus related deaths and 167,759 new cases.