Anthony Fauci said Sunday that pushing Americans to get booster shots won’t deprive others around the globe of the opportunity to get vaccinated.
“We can do both,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.“
At issue is whether encouraging booster shots in the United States and other wealthy nations will deprive less-wealthy countries of the opportunity to vaccinate their own populations. Fauci, who said that early data shows that booster shots help combat the the Omicron variant, said he did not see a conflict.
“We are, right now, vaccinating our own country,” President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser said. “We’re going to be boosting as many people as we possibly can. But you can also simultaneously make doses available to the developing world. And the United States, quite frankly, has done more than all of the other countries combined. We’ve given over 300 million doses to over 100 countries, and we will either have given or pledging 1.1 billion doses and an expansion of even more.“
The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that the recent emergence of the Omicron variant could lead to the world’s wealthiest nations hoarding vaccines at the expense of people in other nations. “We seem to be taking our eye off that ball in countries,” a WHO official said.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reassured host George Stephanopoulos that the United States was committed to treating other nations fairly when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re very well aware of the issue with equity, and we’re very firmly in the corner of equity,” Fauci said. “So, you can do both, George. You can take care of your own country and provide doses to the low- and middle-income countries.“
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