Source / information
Source:
Fauci A. Opening ceremony. Presented at: American Thoracic Society International Conference; 14.-19. May 2021 (virtual meeting).
Disclosure:
Fauci is the director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
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COVID-19 was the focus of the opening ceremony of the American Thoracic Society’s International Conference with a virtual keynote from Anthony S. Fauci, MD, about lessons from the pandemic, a message about vaccinations and more.
“Vaccines were the bright light of this extraordinary challenge we went through,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
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The US currently has more than 30 million cases and more than 580,000 deaths and is still counting, he said. There has been a slow decline in daily infections in the United States since the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We have reached a high plateau, but … as more people get vaccinated … the number of daily infections has dropped from an average of 60,000 the weekly average per day to about 40,000,” said Fauci.
Anthony S. Fauci, MD
Early May, President Joe Biden announced a new goal of at least partially vaccinating 70% of adults in the US against COVID-19 by July 4.
“I wrote an editorial in Science a few weeks ago because there was a misunderstanding about how and why we could move from realizing a new pathogen in January 2020 to getting doses of vaccine into the arms of people of an old-age effective vaccine 11 months later. Truly an unprecedented achievement. As I said in the editorial, the speed and efficiency with which these highly potent vaccines were developed, and their potential to save millions of lives, are due to an extraordinary multidisciplinary effort that has involved basic, preclinical and clinical science in the limelight for Decades before the COVID-19 pandemic was triggered, ”he said.
According to Fauci, the COVID-19 vaccines have shown real-world efficacy that is equivalent to or better than that seen in clinical trials. They demonstrated 95% effectiveness in preventing clinically detectable disease with Pfizer / BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine and greater than 94% effectiveness with Moderna. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 72% effective in the US, 64% when tested against other variants in Brazil and South Africa, and highly effective against serious diseases in all regions studied.
“As many of you know, effectiveness in the real world is often not as good as effectiveness in the pristine conditions of a clinical trial. We found the exact opposite with COVID-19 vaccines, which are as good, if not better, in practice, ”said Fauci.
He cited an example of more than 23,000 employees at UT Southwestern who were vaccinated in December 2020. The infection rate in fully vaccinated employees was 0.05%. In Israel, after an initial lockdown, along with the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, the country reopened as more people were vaccinated and there has been a steady and gradual decrease over time. There are currently very few COVID-19 cases in Israel. he said.
Fauci also said the vaccines are “clearly safe,” as the clinical studies have proven safety and the CDC and FDA, among other safety and surveillance systems, have expanded surveillance systems over long periods of time and large numbers of people.
There are worrying variants, but the data so far has shown that the vaccines cover them well, and all variants are closely monitored.
Fauci concluded by saying, “We are in a race against the virus.”
“If we vaccinate the vast majority of our population, we will no doubt be able to fight the outbreak the same way we did with other virus-borne diseases like measles, smallpox and polio,” he said. “So the message is to get vaccinated.”
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