Anthony Stephen Fauci, Andrew M. Slavitt, and Rochelle Paula Walensky

“ Now, remember, you’re dealing with 30,000 people in a trial.The important thing to point out is that when you give vaccine to millions and millions of people, you got to make sure that when you look at the occurrence of what could appear to be an adverse event, that you essentially compare that into what the background of that type of event would be anyway in society. ”

“ Around 79 percent White, 22 percent Hispanics, 8 percent Black/African American, and 4 percent Native Americans, including American Indians and Native Alaskans residing in the United States, and 4 percent Asian. Twenty percent was 65 years of age or older, and 60 percent had comorbidities associated with an increased risk for progression of severe COVID-19, such as diabetes, severe obesity, or cardiac disease. This is important to get that many people who have comorbidities. ”

“ Taken together, these statistics should serve as a warning sign for the American people. As I’ve stated before, the continued relaxation of prevention measures while cases are still high, and while concerning variants are spreading rapidly throughout the United States, is a serious threat to the progress we have made as a nation.
Increasingly, states are seeing a growing proportion of their COVID-19 cases attributed to variants. The newly identified variant, B1427/B1429, is estimated to account for 52 percent of cases in California, 41 percent in Nevada, and 25 percent in Arizona. ”

“ I think one thing we have to realize is that there’s still a death rate among people who are under the age of 65. And that death rate is certainly going to be consistent with the number of cases we have overall.So while I consider it extraordinarily good news that our death rate is declining in those who have been vaccinated, there is still a death rate among those who are over, you know, 25 — over 20. ”

“ We’re reaching out to individual states, trying to encourage them. We are having weekly governors’ calls. We’re doing outreach with states, territories to encourage them to look at their case data, to look at what’s happening with the variants, and to do as much outreach as we can to try and — to slow down the relaxation. ”

“ Much of the travel, we know, is related to people who are going on spring break. For the most part, people who go on spring break are not the demographic that we’ve been focusing in on travel. We’re worried not just for what happens when you are on the airplane itself, but what happens when people travel. ”

“ In fact, against the backdrop of inequity in vaccine distribution generally, and the severe toll taken by the virus on people of color, in federal vaccination centers, over 60 percent of the shots have gone to people of color. ”

“ And we’re making concerted efforts to make sure that people know that whether or not there’s a mandate in place, people that — it’s in the people’s strong interest — strong interest — to continue to wear a mask until such time that people have had a chance to be vaccinated. ”

“ That non-replication-competent harmless adenovirus is injected into the muscle of an individual. The DNA then codes for RNA, which then essentially codes for the spike protein which the body makes the immune response against. ”

“ We’re talking about a phase three trial involving more than 32,000 participants who are 18 years of age or older, and it was at 88 sites — mostly in the United States but also a small amount in Chile and Peru — with a 2-to-1 randomization of vaccine to placebo. ”

“ Obviously, they’ve got a lot of increases that they need to be committed to doing. So we’ll continue to keep everyone posted.
Next question.
MODERATOR: We’ll go to Rachel Roubein at Politico. Q Hi, thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to follow up on the last one from Jeremy. Since April 1st is the end of next week, do you think that J&J will have that 20 million shots? Can you give us an estimate of how many J&J shots are going out this week and how much states are seeing in their projections for next week? ”