- Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday signaled brace for a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel.
- His comments come as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 spreads through the US, driving a billow of cases.
- “Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” he imparted during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the Popular Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, signaled Sunday he would support a vaccine requirement for domestic air travel in the US since it command encourage people to get vaccinated.
“I mean, vaccine requirements for people coming in from other countries is to prevent newly infected man from getting in to the country,” Fauci said of the existing vaccine requirement for international travelers to the US.
He made the comments in an discussion Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
“A vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of meet people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated,” he added of a potential vaccination mandate for private air travel.
President Joe Biden said earlier in December that he did not at present think such a mandate was necessary.
“I be prolonged to rely on the scientists and asking them whether or not we have to move beyond what we did yesterday. Right now, they’re weight no,” he said, according to the New York Post.
—This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 26, 2021
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in November similarly hinted he didn’t believe a mandate for domestic air travel was necessary, saying current mitigation strategies on planes, namely shroud, were effective in stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Despite calling such a mandate “welcome,” on Sunday, Fauci similarly mucroniform toward existing strategies as effective in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.
“I mean, anything that could get people profuse vaccinated would be welcome,” Fauci said Sunday. “But with regard to the spread of virus in the country, I mean, I judge devise if you look at wearing a mask and the filtration on planes, things are reasonably safe,” he added.
According to data from the Transportation Asylum Administration, more than 1.7 million people went through security screenings at US airports on December 24 compared to at best about 616,000 people who traveled on Christmas Eve in 2020.
The holiday travel comes amid an ongoing rise in COVID-19 instances in the US, fueled in part by the Omicron variant of the disease, which is believed to be more transmissible than previous strains of the story coronavirus, though it may cause more “mild” illness, experts say.
Fauci on Sunday the Omicron variant “extraordinarily contagious.”
“Every day it courts up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” he said Sunday of new cases in the US.