Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, says he is feeling “quite good” a day after receiving his first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“I have a little bit of a sore arm. After the vaccination it was about maybe six to eight hours. I felt absolutely nothing, and then towards the late afternoon I got soreness in the arm,” he said in an interview on CBSN Wednesday. “The same thing happened with other non-COVID vaccines that I have had over the years.”
He and a number of other top health officials were inoculated in front of television cameras as part of an effort to promote confidence in the vaccine’s safety.
Fauci joined CBSN’s Anne-Marie Green for a live interview to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as the nation heads into the Christmas holiday with the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths hovering in record territory.
As the nationwide vaccination effort ramps up, the federal government announced it has reached a deal to buy 100 million additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. Fauci expressed optimism in the availability of vaccines going into 2021. After the first round of doses goes to frontline health care workers, nursing home residents and others at highest risk, more and more of the American public will be able to get the shots in the months ahead.
“At the end of the summer, if we can get the overwhelming majority of the people in this country to accept vaccinations, I think, we will be in good shape towards approaching what all of us would want, a return to some form of normality,” Fauci said.
There have been more than 18 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, and more than 322,000 Americans have died.
Asked about a mutated strain of the virus recently detected in the U.K. which may be more transmissible than before, Fauci explained that viral mutations are nothing new.
“These RNA viruses mutate all the time. The more infection and the more replication you have, the more likelihood is that you are going to get mutations,” he said, and noted that most viral mutations “have no relevant functional impact.”
He said there was no data thus far that indicated the new variant would withstand the vaccine.
“Having said that, we’ve got to take this seriously. We’ve got to follow it very carefully,” he cautioned.
This story will be updated.
