Dr Fauci warned, “We’re dealing with a Delta variant right now, which is very, very different from the original variants that we were dealing with before.”
The delta variant of COVID-19 accounts for93% of cases in the United States, according to an estimate by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC data shows the primary delta variant, known as the lineage B1.617.2, makes up 83.4% of COVID-19 cases. But when combined with its sublineages, that number grows to 93.4%.
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According to the CDC during the same week, the Delta variant accounted for more than 80% of new cases in the U.S. Health experts say it’s typical for a new strain of a virus to be more contagious because it often becomes much more efficient and easily transmitted.
“This is a virus that is highly, highly transmissible. I mean, no doubt about that. The more people that get infected, the more people get hospitalized.” He continued.
“The more people they get hospitalized, the more people that are going to die. This just gets us back to the message that we’re talking about.”
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Overall,194,747,839 people or 59% of the population have been fully vaccinated. The CDC also recently approved the administering of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to children over 5.
“What we have this year, what we didn’t have last year, is we now have vaccines that are highly effective and clearly very safe, particularly now with the recent data, showing that we can vaccinate children from five to 11,” Fauci says.
“And it’s really important to point out if you get the children at that age group. And there were 28 million children within that age category, if we start vaccinating them, now they’ll be fully protected by Christmas.”
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Health officials like Fauci and the rest of the CDC says that children should get vaccinated when able.
Fauci affirms, “That would really be something that’s very good. And that’s the reason why we’re encouraging parents to get children within that age group vaccinated.”
Fauci says it’s safer for vaccinated people to celebrate holidays with their family. “If you’re vaccinated and hopefully you’ll be boosted too, and your family is, you can enjoy a typical Thanksgiving meal, Thanksgiving holiday with your family. There’s no reason not to do that.”
“The thing we are concerned about is the people who are not vaccinated, because what they’re doing is they’re the major source of the dynamics of the infection in the community and the higher, the level of dynamics of infection,” Fauci remarks.
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