US must stick to two-dose strategy for Pfizer, Moderna vaccine: Anthony Fauci

US infectious disease official Anthony Fauci on March 1 said that the country must stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. According to the Washington Post, Fauci said that delaying a second dose to inoculate more Americans creates risk. He went on to even warn that shifting to a single-dose strategy for the vaccines could leave people less protected, enable variants to spread and possibly boost scepticism among Americans already hesitant to get the shots. 

Fauci said that he spoke with the UK health officials who have opted to delay second doses to maximize giving more people shots more quickly. However, he added that the strategy would not make sense in the United States. Further, the health official said that the science does not 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. Fauci said, “You don’t know how durable protection is”.

READ: Fauci Tells Americans To Not Wait For A Particular Vaccine, Says All Are Highly Effective

READ: COVID-19: US Children Could Receive Vaccine By Year End, Says Fauci

All three vaccines are ‘highly effective’ 

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Fauci had urged Americans to take any of the three vaccines available at the moment. He asked people to not delay getting inoculated and take any of the three vaccines as quickly as possible. The nation's top infectious disease expert further added that he would have taken Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine and not waited for another had it been approved by the FDA before. Fauci said that all three vaccines are "highly effective" and people should not delay getting vaccinated over another drug. 

The US FDA granted emergency use authorisation to Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday, making it the first single-dose COVID vaccine approval in the United States. According to the FDA, trial results showed the J&J vaccine to be 72% effective in the US and 66.1% globally. Fauci's remark comes after people in the US expressed concern regarding the efficacy of the J&J vaccine. The effectiveness of the J&J vaccine is considered low as compared to Moderna and Pfizer's COVID-19 drug, both of which claim to be over 90% effective. 

READ: COVID-19: Americans May Still Need Mask In 2022 As US Relaxes Restrictions, Says Fauci

READ: Fauci Says Trump Did 'terrible Things' Whenever He Disagreed With Him Publicly