Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief White House medical adviser and director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appeared on Sunday's CBS program called "Face the Nation," in which he called out the unvaccinated and vaccine-hesitant population to get the jab to help the country fight COVID.
The controversial infectious diseases expert reiterated that the Biden administration will continue its vaccination campaign all over the country to "get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated."
However, Dr. Fauci said that along with vaccination campaigns, "mitigation" must also be done through mask mandates, especially when the U.S. is now facing a 648% increase in the number of new COVID cases since July 1, Yahoo! News reported. The last time the U.S. saw these metrics was in the winter of 2020-2021, when cases surged once more.
According to Breitbart, Dr. Fauci argued that vaccinated people are "not the ones who are getting seriously ill and dying. It's the unvaccinated that are doing that." Which is why he encouraged everyone to "put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties, and realize we have a common enemy, and that common enemy is the virus."
According to latest CDC data, the U.S. reported a peak of almost 147,000 new cases of COVID on August 12. States with the lowest vaccination rates such as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi saw the biggest surges. Hospitals in Texas and Mississippi already set up overflow tents due to the sudden increase in hospitalizations.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who appeared on Fox News on Sunday warned that the U.S. is inching closer to 200,000 new cases of COVID per day, which level of transmission will be similar to the winter surge, The Guardian reported. Collins lamented that the U.S. is facing the delta variant of COVID, which he described as "so contagious," with "90 million people are still unvaccinated, who are sitting ducks for this virus."
Vaccine mandates have already rolled out for larger institutions such as the federal government and military. Given the back to school season, the government is also mulling over requiring teachers and school staff to get the COVID shot to keep children, who are not yet eligible to take the shot, safe from the disease.
In a conversation with USA Today, Dr. Fauci argued that "If you are in a position of being responsible for another person, be that the development of a child in a school or in my position as a physician who still sees patients, I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep the people for whom I am responsible safe and healthy."
"Therefore, I absolutely lean strongly toward when people are in those positions, if they don't want to get vaccinated, I would mandate that they get vaccinated," Dr. Fauci said. Vaccine mandates are being met with intense pushback, especially from the American Federation of Teachers and other groups who oppose forced vaccinations.
