The US President Joe Biden said he does not think that herd immunity to COVID-19 can be developed before the end of summer, CNBC reported Sunday.
“The idea that this can be done and we can get to herd immunity much before the end of this summer is very difficult,” the president said in an interview with CBS' Norah O'Donnell.
The statement reportedly came in response to O'Donnell, who said it would take nearly a year to vaccinate enough Americans to achieve herd immunity at the current rate of around 1.3 million doses given every day.
Earlier, Dr. Anthony Fauci, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director and the leading US specialist in the battle against COVID-19, said that to achieve herd immunity, it would require between 70% to 90% of the population to be inoculated against the virus.
Biden also said that he was looking for new ways to vaccinate more US citizens faster. He said he supported a National Football League initiative to use its 30 stadiums as mass vaccination centers, but stopped short of committing himself to the action.
“I’m telling my team they are available, and I believe we’ll use them,” he added.
Biden has been openly critical about his predecessor's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic ever since it broke out in the country in early last year, especially about the rollout of the vaccine, of which Trump said during his last weeks in the office, that the situation would improve in a short amount of time.
The US has been among the worst-hit nations in the novel coronavirus pandemic since March 2020, with 26.9 million cases recorded since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, according to the data of Johns Hopkins University, and about 462,000 deaths related to the contraction of the virus.