Fauci Pushes Back Timeline for General Public to Get COVID-19 Vaccination
WAITING GAME
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Less than a week after Dr. Anthony Fauci said April would be “open season” for the general public to get COVID-19 vaccinations, the nation’s top infectious disease expert has walked his estimate back. “That was predicated on J&J, the Johnson product, having considerably more doses than now we know they're going to have,” Fauci said Tuesday in a CNN interview. Johnson & Johnson will have less than 10 million doses once it gets FDA approval, down from 100 million which it was predicting earlier. People of all ages and who are not immunocompromised will be waiting “maybe into mid- to late May and early June,” according to Fauci’s updated estimates. Simultaneously on Tuesday, the Biden administration announced it will send additional vaccine doses—upwards of 20 percent of what was previously expected—to states beginning this week.