Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s boss, is speaking out on how to stay safe. And no wonder—hospitalizations from COVID reached 100,000 for the first time since January and the Delta variant is proving more dangerous and more transmissible than any before it. Read on for five essential things you need to know from Dr. Collins—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don’t miss these Sure Signs You Have “Long” COVID and May Not Even Know It.
“I didn’t think a year ago, as we were struggling to try to get the vaccines developed, that the problem we would have now would be the limited uptake,” said Collins to LX.com. “Yes, only about 50% of Americans are fully vaccinated. About 70% have gotten at least one dose. But we’ve got to do a lot better than that if we’re going to actually send this virus packing. It is taking such advantage of unvaccinated people and it’s become a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And we look at the new cases that are coming up at very high levels, over 150,000 every day. They’re mostly unvaccinated people. The people in the hospital are mostly the unvaccinated people. And sadly, the over 1,000 people who are dying every day are almost entirely unvaccinated. And this is preventable. And you can see … that it is not uniformly distributed. There are areas where uptake has been even lower, and that’s also where the cases are the highest. So come on, America, we got evidence here that this is something that can save you and your family from a terrible outcome. Let’s hit the reset button on all the misinformation you might have heard. Look at the data and I think you’ll be convinced this is something you want.”
“Well, of course we should worry about everything when it comes to COVID, and especially with Delta,” Collins told NPR. “But there are mitigation methods to try to reduce the risk. Gosh knows, we all want to get the kids back in school to have that in-person experience for learning, for socialization. We ought to be doing everything we can to make that possible safely. This is why I’m just so puzzled about the big fight about masks in the school room. If you want to avoid having that outbreak that’s going to send all the kids home again, you should be doing everything to avoid that, and that means wearing masks. My understanding when you talk to students – they seem a little less worried about wearing masks than some of their parents. It just makes good sense. And by the way, if somebody tries to tell you we don’t really have scientific evidence to say that masks reduce infection in schools, that’s just not true. There are dozens of publications, both from the U.S. and other countries, to show that’s the case. So boy, I wish we could get over that fight. That one is really getting in the way of what is going to be a tough enough fall as it is.”
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“Well, first of all, we’re seeing a surge in everybody because of the delta variant, which is so incredibly contagious, but it’s also the case that pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to getting significantly ill with this and ending up in the ICU — more so than other individuals of a similar age,” said Collins to LX.com. “So we really do need to get the word out there, particularly for pregnant women, that this is not a time to be unvaccinated. All of the concerns about safety, I think, have been addressed, but the seriousness of the illness is really something to pay attention to.”
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“There’s about 85 million Americans that are still on the fence, have not yet gotten that first dose,” said Collins on NPR. “The hope of many of us is that this will be a motivation for those folks to decide to go forward, because polls had said that was an issue for at least 3 out of 10, and now that 3 out of 10 – I hope they’re listening right now – will decide to go to vaccines.gov, find out where the closest place is to get their immunization and do it today.”
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Follow Fauci’s fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you live—get vaccinated ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don’t travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don’t go indoors with people you’re not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don’t visit any of these 35 Places You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID.