Fauci Says Herd Immunity Against COVID-19 May Not be Achieved Even With Vaccine Due to Anti-Vaxxers

(Photo : Kevin Dietsch /Pool via REUTERS)
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the Trump Administration's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.

WASHINGTON - United States' immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci shared that he would settle for a coronavirus vaccine with an effectiveness of 70% to 75% but a large portion of Americans are not in favor of taking the vaccine making less achievable for the US to establish sufficient levels of immunity to pacify the health crisis.

With the support of the government, three COVID-19 vaccines will undergo large-scale clinical trials and expected in the next three months.

Fauci shared that the best vaccine that they have ever made so far is measles as it reached effectiveness of 97 to 98 percent.

As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci emphasized that it will be wonderful once the vaccine for COVID-19 reaches the same level with the measles but he shared that he does not think it will and he is settling for a coronavirus vaccine with 70 to 75% effectiveness rather than none.

In the last month's poll of CNN, they found that one-third of Americans are not willing to submit their selves to get vaccinated against COVID-19 despite the scenario given that if the vaccine is widely available and cheap.

In an interview on Friday with CNN, when Fauci was asked if only two-thirds of the population would take the vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy will it provide herd immunity to the COVID-19 he replied no and explained that herd immunity only happens when a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to a certain infectious disease, and it can only be two options, first through vaccination and second through prior illness so that it will not be transferred from one person to another.

Fauci also emphasized that the vaccination education effort is not going to be easy as there will be always anti-science, anti-government, anti-vaccine feelings within the people in the United States and it is alarming because of the large percentage of people, Miami Herald reported.

We have a lot of work to do according to Fauci as people need to be educated regarding the truth about vaccines even it is not going to be easy.

The director also shared that the government has a vaccine education program that counteracts to the anti-vaccine messages.

According to Axios, Fauci shared that there is a current program that requires extensive reaching out to the community because people do not like government personnel in a suit and tie telling what they will do, he mentioned that what they need is to hear the message from a person whom they can relate to in the community, sports figures, community heroes, and people they look up to.

The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention currently runs numerous federal health education programs, but Kristen Nordlund, the spokeswoman of the agency referred news outlets to the Department of Health and Human Services of the US which is run by the Operation Warp Speed, the efforts of the Trump administration is developing a vaccine for coronavirus.