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Dr Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in an interview published on Sunday that up to 90% of Americans may need to be vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Now we need 85-95% Delta vaccine,” he told USA Today.
Tom McCarthy, chief of the Rhode Island Department of Health’s COVID response unit, also estimated the number at around 90%, citing the Delta variant, the newspaper reported.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the New York Times in an interview published in December that between 70% and 90% of the American population should get vaccinated (or vaccinated) against COVID-19 for the country to achieve collective immunity.
“We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is between 70 and 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent,” he said at the time.
Herd immunity occurs when a large percentage of a specific population becomes immune to a virus; immunity can occur naturally or through vaccines to prevent viral infections like influenza and COVID-19.
About 56 percent of the United States, or 185 million, is considered fully immunized.
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Fauci suggested on Sunday that Americans may have to spend Christmas alone in 2021. He told CBS’s “Face The Nation” it was too early to tell.
“We need to focus on continuing to reduce those numbers and not try to go forward weeks or months and say what we’re going to do at some point,” Fauci said.
Fox News’s Audrey Conklin contributed to this report
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