Dr. Anthony Fauci said the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 deaths in June were among people who have not yet been vaccinated and were generally “avoidable and preventable.”
“If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2% of them are unvaccinated. About 0.8% are vaccinated,” the longtime director at the National Institutes of Health said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “No vaccine is perfect. But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, it's really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”
More than 9,000 people died from coronavirus in the United States in June.
Dr. Fauci said although the Delta variant is more contagious and more deadly than other strains of the virus, he does not anticipate cases to spike dramatically nationwide.
“For goodness' sake, put aside all of those differences and realize that the common enemy is the virus,” Fauci said. “Yet we do have a countermeasure that's highly, highly effective. And that's the reason why it's all the more sad and all the more tragic why it isn't being completely implemented in this country.”
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As of Monday, 58.3% of adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated and 67.1% have had at least one dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Fauci, the White House's chief medical advisor, encouraged vaccinated people to remain vigilant by wearing masks in crowded or largely unvaccinated areas.
President Joe Biden also asked Americans to get vaccinated Sunday before a July 4 fireworks display, calling it “the most patriotic thing you can do.”
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