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

“ I know what it’s like as a physician to stand in that patient room — gowned, gloved, masked, shielded — and to be the last person to touch someone else’s loved one because their loved one couldn’t be there. ”

“ This is good news. We’re headed in the right direction. But we can’t slow down. Millions remain unvaccinated and at risk.
We need to keep increasing vaccine supply, the number of vaccinators in the field, and adding more safe and convenient places for Americans to get vaccinated, especially as more states begin to open vaccine eligibility to all adults.
Now, today, as part of this ongoing effort to help meet the President’s goal of 200 million shots in his first 100 days, we’re announcing two new federally run mass vaccination sites. ”

“ If you look at the prevention of hospitalization and death among the five vaccines on the left-hand part of the slide, with one exception of a hospitalized patient in the vaccine arm of the Moderna study, virtually 100 percent protection against hospitalizations and death. ”

“ I’m calling on our elected officials, our faith-based communities, our civic leaders, and our other influencers in communities across the nation, and I’m calling on every single one of you to sound the alarm to carry these messages into your community and your spheres of influence. ”

“ And when we see that uptick in cases, what we have seen before is that things really have a tendency to surge and surge big.We know that cases sometimes can be a week or two behind the behaviors that lead to those cases, the mixing that leads to those cases. We know that travel is up, and I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and over the winter again. ”

“ The study found that the risk of infection was reduced by 90 percent after individuals received the two recommended doses of the vaccine. The study also found that people starting to get a protective effect, even after the first dose, the risk of infection decreased by 80 percent after two weeks. Findings of this are all consistent with the clinical trial data.
Importantly, people in the study received self-collected nasal swabs each week for laboratory testing, allowing CDC to look at evidence of COVID-19 infection whether or not people had symptoms. ”

“ It means continuing to socially distance; socially distancing saves lives. And it means getting vaccinated when it’s your turn, because getting vaccinated saves lives — not just your own, but your family and friends and neighbors too.
With that, I’m going to turn this over to Dr. Walensky and then to Dr. Fauci for some important updates.
DR. WALENSKY: Thank you, Andy. I’m glad to be back with you all today. I want to begin with an overview of the continuing concerning trends in the data. Yesterday, we in the United States surpassed 30 million cases of COVID-19. ”

“ Privacy of the information, security of the information, and a marketplace of solutions are all things that are part of what we believe in, as is the ability for people to access this free and in multiple languages. ”

“ We have seen an uptick in travel. Much more travel is happening. I think people want to be done with this. As I mentioned, I too want to be done with this. The thing that’s different this time is that we actually have it in our power to be done with the scale of the vaccination. And that will be so much slower if we have another surge to deal with as well.
ACTING ADMINISTRATOR SLAVITT: Dr. Fauci, anything you want to add to that? DR. FAUCI: Yeah. I think everyone really needs to appreciate that we really do want to get back to normal as quickly as we possibly can. ”

“ CDC’s most recent data show that the seven-day average of new cases is slightly less than 60,000 cases per day. This is a 10 percent increase compared to the prior seven-day period.
Hospitalizations have also increased. The most recent seven-day average, about 48 admi- — 4,800 admissions per day, is up from 4,600 admissions per day in the prior seven-day period. And deaths, which typically lag behind cases and hospitalizations, have now started to rise, increasing nearly 3 percent to a seven-day average of approximately 1,000 deaths per day. ”

“ And I think the reason we’re seeing this plateauing and a bit of a little increase that we hope doesn’t turn into a surge is because we are really doing things prematurely right now with regard to opening up.
ACTING ADMINISTRATOR SLAVITT: Chris, will you — DR. WALENSKY: Perhaps one other — ACTING ADMINISTRATOR SLAVITT: Please, Dr. Walensky. DR. WALENSKY: Perhaps one other comment on that, and that is our concern about variants. We’ve been watching the variants really carefully. We know about 26 percent of all sequenced virus is now the B117 variant. ”

“ Number one, that there is equitable access; that means whether or not people have access to technology or whether they don’t. It’s also important that we recognize that there are still many, many millions and millions of Americans that have not yet been vaccinated. ”

“ Okay, so we have vaccine passport; we have travel guidelines, which I will route to you, Dr. Walensky; and then we have 11 million J&J doses. Usually, I forget the third question if there’s a third question by the time we get to it.You know, relative to the vaccine passport, we think it’s very important for the public — job one is for the public to become comfortable if they’re considering taking a vaccine — why that is in their best interest. And we think all of the data and all of the results and all the impact in the slide that Dr. ”