Fauci: U.S. must stick with two-shot strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna vaccines

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Tue, 2021-03-02 11:13 — mike kraft

Fauci: U.S. must stick with two-shot strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna vaccines Delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risks, infectious-disease expert says. Dan Diamond Washington Post

The government’s top infectious-disease expert on Monday reiterated that the United States will stick to a plan to inoculate tens of millions of Americans with two doses of coronavirus vaccine, as calls mount to protect more people by letting them get one shot now.

“There’s risks on either side,” Anthony S. Fauci told The Washington Post, warning that shifting to a single-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines could leave people less protected, enable variants to spread and possibly boost skepticism among Americans already hesitant to get the shots.

“We’re telling people [two shots] is what you should do … and then we say, ‘Oops, we changed our mind’?” Fauci said. “I think that would be a messaging challenge, to say the least.”

Fauci said he spoke on Monday with health officials in the United Kingdom, who have opted to delay second doses to maximize giving more people shots more quickly. He said that although he understands the strategy, it wouldn’t make sense in America. “We both agreed that both of our approaches were quite reasonable,” Fauci said. ...

Two Democratic senators on Monday also called for the Biden administration to inoculate Americans with a single dose to ensure more people get some protection before a possible spring surge of cases. “Based on conversations with health officials, we believe this approach is worthy of serious consideration,” Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) wrote to Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, in a letter shared with The Post. About 80 percent of adults have yet to get a single dose, according to CDC data.

Fauci said the science doesn’t support delaying a second dose for those vaccines, citing research that a two-shot regimen creates enough protection to help fend off variants of the coronavirus that are more transmissible, whereas a single shot could leave Americans at risk from variants such as the one first detected in South Africa.

He also said there is insufficient evidence of the benefit of a single Pfizer or Moderna dose — or data showing how long the immunity conferred by one shot would last. “You don’t know how durable that protection is,” he said. ...

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