Anthony Stephen Fauci, Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Rochelle Paula Walensky, and Jeffrey Dunston Zients

“ Bottom line is, people look to trusted community members when they have questions and concerns, and we want to support these trusted voices because they have the power to help turn this pandemic around.
And that’s why yesterday we launched the COVID-19 Community Corps. It’s a nationwide grassroots network of health professionals, community organizations, faith leaders, businesses, and Americans from all walks of life who are collectively stepping up to be leaders for their communities in this national vaccination effort. ”

“ And as the President announced earlier this week, states are responding to his call to make all adult Americans eligible to receive a vaccine no later than May 1. In fact, by April 19th, more than 90 percent of all adults across the country will be eligible for vaccination, and 90 percent of Americans will have a vaccine site within five miles of where they live. ”

“ Our guidance on unvaccinated individuals really is to limit travel to only essential travel with masking — protective, prevention strategies.And so our update on this is really only for those who are vaccinated, and that represents about 20 percent of the adult population. ”

“ However, fully vaccinated people should get tested and have a negative test result before they board an international flight back into the United States, but they do not need to quarantine when they arrive here. ”

“ We are better equipped than ever before to take on these serious challenges, but we must remain vigilant. Finally, I want to briefly update — a follow-up on a question I received on Wednesday from Nsikan Akpan at New York Public Radio about the B1526 variant and its classification as a variant of interest rather than a variant of concern.
I want to be clear that listing a variant as one of interest rather than a variant of concern does not mean we are not prioritizing the variant or that the variant is not important for us to carefully follow. ”

“ Some of the founding members include sports leagues, like NASCAR, Major League Baseball, and WWE; health professionals, like the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association; industry groups, like the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Farm Bureau ”

“ And that evolving evidence demonstrates that traveling would be a low-risk activity if you are fully vaccinated. And that was the reason for the update of the guidance.That said, we are at 64,000 new COVID cases today. And that is — and our numbers continue to increase. Our — we have an increase of 8 percent today.
I still continue to worry that, with 80 percent of the population unvaccinated, that we have a lot of work to do to control this pandemic, which remains my concern. ”

“ So the bottom-line message is that vaccines work very well in the real-world setting. They work against variants, although we need further data to confirm that. They are durable for at least six months. And they work in adolescence. Very, very good reason for everyone to get vaccinated as soon as it becomes available to you. ”

“ There seems to be little doubt that the 117 seems to transmit more efficiently from person to person. There is a suggestion that it also causes more severe disease. The proof of that is much more difficult than showing that it’s more transmissible. ”