Dr. Fauci: Healthy Americans Without Underlying Conditions Should Expect to Get Vaccine in March or April

Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson he expects healthy Americans without underlying conditions should be able to receive the coronavirus vaccine around the end of March or beginning of April — but that they’ll need to continue following precautions, including wearing face masks, through fall 2021.

The Pfizer vaccine has been granted emergency use authorization and administration began on Monday. Current protocols have front line health care workers receiving the first rounds of shots, followed by people in long term care facilities, the elderly, and others with health conditions that put them at greater risk of death or complications from Covid-19. Other vaccines being developed by companies like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are expected to be approved in the near future as well.

Jackson asked Fauci about when he expected that “regular healthy Americans can go into sort of their local pharmacy, get the vaccine like you might get a flu shot,” noting that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had estimated early March, and Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui had said May or June.

“Where on that spectrum is it really?” asked Jackson.

Fauci replied that he estimated it would be “sometime at the end of March, beginning of April that the normal healthy man, woman in the street who has no underlying conditions would likely get it,” but it would really “depend on the efficiency of the rollout, the number of people that actually come forth.”

Fauci then walked through the priority list as set by the advisory committee on immunization practices: first, “frontline health care providers and people in nursing homes and those caring for those in the nursing homes, then the elderly and people with underlying conditions.”

The initial vaccine rollout would not be enough to stop following health precautions, Fauci warned, explaining that he expected it would take until late spring, early summer before we would start seeing herd immunity benefits, if we were “efficient about it and convince people to get vaccinated,” and it would be fall before “we can start approaching some degree of relief where the level of infection will be so low in society we can start essentially approaching some form of normality.”

“A vaccine right now is not a substitute for the normal standard public health measures of wearing a mask, keeping your distance, avoiding crowded sections, particularly indoors,” Fauci continued. “It complements it only when you get the level of infection in society so low that it’s no longer a public health threat can you then think about the possibility of pulling back on public health measures. But certainly we’re not anywhere near there yet.”

Fauci also said that he is still planning to get vaccinated publicly and expects to receive the shot within this week or the next, “maybe at the latest the next couple weeks.”

“I’m going to be available to get vaccinated publicly so that people can see that I feel strongly that this is something we should do and hopefully that will encourage many more people to get vaccinated,” said Fauci.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

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