Covid: Fauci tells US to ‘stop getting fixated on herd immunity’ as vaccinations hit 3m per day

Roughly 96 per cent of Americans who received first dose have followed up for second shot, CDC reports

Shots of Covid-19 vaccines in the US have reached more than 3 million in a single day for the first time, with the daily average of administered doses topping 2.4 million.

Dr Anthony Fauci and White House health officials have stressed that the vaccine’s success in combatting the public health crisis should not necessarily be measured through “herd immunity” but by vaccinating as many Americans as quickly and safely as possible.

“We should not get so fixated on this elusive number of herd immunity,” the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told reporters on Monday. “We should just be concerned about getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can, because herd immunity is still somewhat of an elusive number.”

More than 107 million doses of vaccine have been administered, with roughly 21 per cent of the nation’s population receiving at least one shot from the two required doses of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr Fauci had previously projected 70 to 85 per cent of the population would need to be immune to the coronavirus to achieve herd immunity, which occurs when a majority of a population has become immune to prevent widespread infection.

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He said: “Rather than fixating on that, why don’t we just say, get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can, and every day that goes by, with more than 2 million doses going into people, we’re getting closer and closer to control of this pandemic.”

Roughly 96 per cent of patients who have received a first dose of a vaccine got their second shot within the recommended timeframe, according to the CDC. Only 3 per cent missed their second dose, the agency reported on Monday.

CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said the latest report is “incredibly reassuring”.

Roughly two-thirds of US seniors and nearly 30 per cent of eligible adults have received at least a first dose of vaccine, health officials reported. “By no means should that be perceived as declaring victory,” said White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt.

Dr Walensky urged Americans to continue to follow health guidelines – including wearing face coverings and physically distancing – as the nation’s rates of hospital admissions and deaths from the disease continue to decline. More than 1.3 million people travelled through US airports on 12 March, the largest travel spike since airline travel plummeted at the beginning of the public health crisis one year ago.

While hospital admissions have declined to 4,700 per day, and the seven-day average of coronavirus deaths has dropped to 1,200, the nation still averages more than 52,000 new infections each day.

“I’m pleading with you, for the sake of our nation’s health,” Dr Walensky said. “Cases climbed last spring. They climbed again in the summer. They will climb now if we stop taking precautions when we continue to get more and more people vaccinated.”

Federal health officials have also largely rejected “vaccine passport” concepts which would require travellers to the US or Americans within the country to carry some form of proof that they have received a vaccine.

Mr Slavitt said the administration does not believe it is the role of the government to hold or require that data, but added that there is a “right way” for nonprofit organisations or private companies to do so.He said data collection should be private, open-source, secure, free to access, and available both digitally and on paper and in multiple languages.