Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted that COVID-19 vaccines do not “protect overly well” against infection.
The admission from America’s top immunologist came after Fauci recently caught the virus, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted.
However, Fauci, Democrat President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, insisted during an interview with Fox News that vaccines are still necessary.
Fauci argues that a higher rate of vaccinations is needed for the public to stop the virus from continuing “to spread in our community.”
“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines – because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus – don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death,” he said.
“And I believe that’s the reason … why at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” he also said.
“That’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course.”
Despite admitting that the vaccines “don’t protect overly well” against infection, Fauci still recommends Americans get the shots.
“My message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected – the answer is if you weren’t vaccinated, the likelihood [is] you would have had [a] more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated,” he said.
WATCH:
In which Dr. Anthony Fauci admits vaccines "don't protect overly well against infection" and "didn't protect [him] against infection" yet also calls for a higher rate of vaccination because without it "we're giving the virus an opportunity to continue to spread in our community." pic.twitter.com/xRtVgOxupd
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) July 12, 2022
When 81-year-old Fauci contracted COVID earlier this month, he decided to take Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral drug for people at greater risk of complications.
He initially had minimal symptoms but took the drug when he began to feel worse.
After the five-day course of the medication, he said he felt “really quite well” for a while, aside from some fatigue and a bit of congestion.
“It was sort of what people are referring to as a Paxlovid rebound,” Fauci said during a remote interview with the Foreign Policy Global Health Forum, ABC reported.
The outlet noted that Paxlovid is approved for people in the U.S. with “mild-to-moderate symptoms” and “at significant risk of progressing to severe illness.”
Fauci’s comments came shortly after a panel of independent advisers that works with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended producing new vaccines to target the Omicron variant.
By a 19-2 vote, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) approved a plan to have new vaccines ready by early October.
The panel said the newly formulated vaccines are needed because new subvariants of the Omicron strain appear to be able to bypass antibodies delivered via previous vaccines.
That would mean Americans could be urged to take a fourth shot, with fifth shots for the immunocompromised and people over 50 years old.
