President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris should get the new COVID-19 vaccine as quickly as possible, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday.
“For security reasons I really feel strongly that we should get them vaccinated as soon as we possibly can. We want him fully protected as he enters into the presidency in January. So, that would be my strong recommendation,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
He also urged President Trump to get the coronavirus vaccine even though he recovered from a bout with the disease in October.
“If he were asking me, I would recommend that he do that, as well as Vice President [Mike] Pence. You still want to protect people who are very important to our country right now,” Fauci said.
Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force whom Biden tapped as his chief medical adviser, added that Trump probably has coronavirus antibodies.
“We’re not sure how long that protection lasts. So, to be doubly sure, I would recommend that he get vaccinated, as well as the vice president,” he said.
Biden, speaking to reporters as he prepared to travel to Georgia to campaign for Democratic candidates in a Senate runoff election in Georgia, said he would take Fauci up on the offer.”
Dr. Fauci recommends I get the vaccine sooner than later. I want to make sure that we do it by the numbers and when I do it you’ll have notice and we’ll do it publicly,” Biden said.
The first federally approved COVID-19 vaccine rolled out in the US on Monday — the same day the country’s death toll from the pandemic exceeded 300,000.
The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, was granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday evening.