Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it’s “understandable” for some parents to be hesitant about vaccinating their children, after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the green light for 28 million young children to get vaccinated against Covid-19. But if his kids were ages 5-11, Fauci said he “would definitely get them vaccinated.”
“They’re not exempt from getting sick” from Covid-19, Fauci said, and persistent “long Covid” has been seen in children as well.
“There have now been about 700 deaths in the younger age group. … Children are vulnerable. They can get infected, and they also can spread the infection once they get infected within the family unit. So there’s a lot of reasons to get the children vaccinated, and we’re very pleased that it’s has gone through the appropriate process of scrutinization,” he said in an interview on CNN.
He also debunked a myth that vaccines affect fertility.
“There's no indication whatsoever, even any mechanistic feasibility that would affect fertility at all. In fact, in the millions and millions of doses and billions of doses that have been given worldwide of the vaccine, there’s no indication whatsoever that it has anything to do with fertility,” said Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden.
Fauci added that “I’m not so sure we’re going to get soon to zero spread.”
“I don't think we're going to get to eradication. We’ve only eradicated one viral disease, and that's smallpox. But you can get it down to a very low level, if you get enough people vaccinated,” he said.
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