I would encourage any individual who is elderly or is medically fragile to think long and hard about going to any large gathering that would involve close quarters and potential spread. And if they do go, to take appropriate personal hygiene protections.

Anthony Fauci

No vaccine, at least not within this category, is going to have an indefinite amount of protection, inevitably, there will be a time when we'll have to give boosts. What we're doing literally on a weekly and monthly basis is following cohorts of patients to determine if, when and whom should get it. But right now at this moment, other than the immune compromised, we're not going to be giving boosters to people.

There’s no doubt that there are more children getting infected.

The vaccines are doing exactly what we're asking them to do when it comes to keeping Barney Graham out of the hospital, out of serious disease and certainly preventing Barney Graham death, an important point to bring up is that the greater the percentage of people that are vaccinated, even with a high degree of protection, the absolute number of breakthrough infections might appear high.

If we had the overwhelming proportion of the people vaccinated, we would not be having this conversation.

If we continue to vaccinate and we get that 93 million people who are eligible for vaccinations, who have not been vaccinated, if we do that in the immediate, intermediate, and long-term, and do the mitigation right now, we will turn the delta surge around, i will guarantee you that that will happen if we do what I just outlined.

United States're going to have areas where the vaccine rate is high, where more than 70 % of the population has received at least one dose. When United States compare that with areas where United States may have 35 % of the people vaccinated, United States clearly have a high risk of seeing these spikes in those selected areas.

We may get there when mandates come, but it can't be 250,000, 500,000 a day, otherwise it's going to go well into the winter. I want to get there sooner.

Those individuals we know almost invariably do not have an adequate response, so the need to give them an additional boost is much more emergent than the general population.

We are trying very hard to get the regulatory mechanism in place very soon to get those individuals a boost that might bring up their immunity to the level where it should be, if possible.

Variants, we all know, have emerged because of the pressure that the human immune system has put on the virus, very likely from people who are immunosuppressed... and had virus in them for days and days and days before they cleared it and/or died, and then essentially led to the emergence of a variant.

I think Unvaccinated Covid-19 patients have enough of the percentage of people in the country, not enough to crush the outbreak, but I believe enough to not allow Unvaccinated Covid-19 patients to get into the situation Unvaccinated Covid-19 patients were in last winter.

We're looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we're seeing cases go up.

I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement.

What I would really like to see is more and more of the leaders in those areas that are not vaccinating to get out and speak out and encourage people to get vaccinated.

It’s a dynamic situation. It’s a work in progress, it evolves like in so many other areas of the pandemic, you’ve got to look at the data.

I would be astounded if these vaccines, namely the mRNA and the JJ, didn’t get full approval.

If anybody is lying here senator, it is you.

Thus far, things look good, but the final decision is going to be up to the FDA. And I would imagine that likely will not happen until we get well into the winter, towards the end of this year.

I do, right, and I'm not alone in that, a recent paper was put out by 21 very well internationally-respected virologists and evolutionary biologists who said the same thing as I'm saying. And I rely on people like that, who have great experience in this. That's what they do every single day -- who, again, are open minded -- and are saying it's conceivable that you may have had a lab leak. So you've got to keep an open mind to all possibilities, but they feel that the more likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal host to a human.

The most likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal reservoir to a human, once you say that, which I believe is the more likely, you've got to make sure you emphasize that you still keep an open mind for all possibilities, including a lab leak.