Fauci: Second vaccine doses should not be delayed ‘based on the scientific data that we’ve accumulated’

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Sunday that he disagreed with experts who have suggested the second dose of the coronavirus vaccine could be delayed to prioritize more first doses.

“One of the problems that if you want to really study it to see that, the amount of time that it will take, the amount of people you would have to put into the study — by that time, we will already be in the arena of having enough — of having enough vaccines to go around anyway,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Fauci said that “from a theoretical standpoint” information on the durability of a single dose would be helpful. “But what we have right now, and what we must go with, is the scientific data that we’ve accumulated, and it’s really very solid,” he added. “We know that with each of these it’s either 21 days or 28 days. You can do both. You can get as many people in their first dose at the same time as adhering, within reason, to the timetable of the second dose.”

Under current circumstances, Fauci added, “the demand clearly outstrips the supply.”

WATCH: The demand and supply discrepancy of Covid vaccines is a “bit inevitable,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci on #MTP.

Fauci: “We certainly, I guess, could have contracted, a little bit more aggressively, with the companies to get more doses but right now, this is what we have.” pic.twitter.com/bmRiWAOm9y

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) February 7, 2021

“If you look at the escalation of availability of doses purely on the ability and the capability of manufacturing that, it’s going to escalate and will continue to escalate as we go from February to March to April and beyond,” he added. “So even though there’s a clear, clear discrepancy between this, the demand and the supply, that will get better as we get through February and into March.”