With winter closing in and coronavirus case rates creeping up once again, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci is warning that the vaccines’ waning immunity combined with the highly transmissible delta variant will make for a “double whammy” that will impact “even the vaccinated people.”
“The somewhat unnerving aspect of it is that if you keep the level of dynamics of the virus in the community at a high level — obviously the people who are most most vulnerable are the unvaccinated — but when you have a virus as transmissible as delta, in the context of waning immunity, that dynamic is going to negatively impact even the vaccinated people. So it’s a double whammy,” Fauci said in a pretaped interview aired at the 2021 STAT Summit Tuesday afternoon.
“You’re going to see breakthrough infections, even more so than we see now among the vaccinated,” he added.
His grim prediction meets a chorus of alarm bells already being sounded about COVID’s renewed spread as more people head inside as the holidays approach, heralding a season of family gatherings.
The national reported average for new cases each day has surged to more than 80,000, according to federal data — the highest in nearly a month. Forty states are currently showing high transmission, and total hospitalizations have increased for the first time in nearly 10 weeks.
Combatting any impending viral onslaught this winter hinges on how many more sleeves roll up for more shots, Fauci said. It won’t only be important to persuade the roughly 60 million “recalcitrant” people who have yet to get their first dose, but also “how well we implement a booster program,” he said.