Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said Sunday that Americans could return to holding in-person holiday festivities, provided they are vaccinated.
Dr. Fauci, who also heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, issued the guidance on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I believe strongly … in the vaccinated people,” he said. “If you’re vaccinated and your family members are vaccinated … You can enjoy Halloween, trick-or-treating, and certainly Thanksgiving with your family and Christmas with your family.”
He added that a return to normal during the upcoming holiday season was one of the reasons the White House stressed the need to get vaccinated.
“When you do that, there’s no reason at all why you can’t enjoy the holidays in a family way, the way we’ve traditionally done it all along,” Dr. Fauci said.
The news comes as President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate has come under fire from Republicans.
More than 57% of Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the federal government.
If those numbers do not improve, however, Dr. Fauci warned it could lead to another wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The problem is, as we all know, we still have approximately 66 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated,” he said during a later appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
“The degree to which we continue to come down in that slope will depend on how well we do about getting more people vaccinated,” added Dr. Fauci. “If we don’t do very well in that regard, there’s always the danger that there’ll be enough circulating virus that … there’s the danger of resurgence.”
Health, The New York Today
