The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting new data on Americans and the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
Although vaccine hesitancy has been reported in multiple outlets, this new information could keep the virus around for a very long time. According to the CDC, 8% of people in the nation who got their first dose of the vaccine have not or will not go back for their second shot -- over five million people, as reported by ABC-7 in New York.
"If a person received the two doses from different reporting entities, those two doses may not have been linked together," a CDC spokesperson said, according to CNN.
"For example, if a person received their first dose at a clinic run by the state, and second dose from a tribal health clinic, they might not be linked and it could look like they missed the second dose."
At this point, according to the CDC, 95 million Americans, about 28.5% of Americans have been fully vaccinated and about 140 million, about 42.2% have received at least one dose.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday it’s not uncommon for people to miss or skip the second jab from a vaccine, especially when it’s a multi-dose vaccine.
"Obviously whenever you have a two-dose vaccine, you're going to see people who for one reason or other -- convenience, forgetting, a number of other things -- just don't show up for the second vaccine," Fauci said.
"I'd like it to be a 0%," he said, "but I'm not surprised that there are some people who do that."
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