Fauci: More than 99% of people who died from COVID-19 in June were not vaccinated

Anthony Fauci on Sunday said more than 99 percent of the people who died from COVID-19 in June were not vaccinated, calling the loss of life “avoidable and preventable.”

“If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 percent of them are unvaccinated. About 0.8 percent are vaccinated. No vaccine is perfect. But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, Chuck, it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable,” Fauci told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He added, “I mean, obviously there are going to be some people, because of the variability among people and their response to vaccine, that you’ll see some who are vaccinated and still get into trouble and get hospitalized and die. But the overwhelming proportion of people who get into trouble are the unvaccinated. Which is the reason why we say this is really entirely avoidable and preventable.” 

Nearly 10,000 people in the U.S. died from COVID-19 in June, Todd noted. 

The U.S. has made strides in its vaccination effort, but ultimately fell short of President Biden’s goal of having 70 percent of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4.

As of Sunday, 67.1 percent of U.S. adults had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, and 47.4 percent of the total U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An analysis of government data by The Associated Press last month found that almost all recent deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. are among those who have not been vaccinated.

The data from May showed that only 0.8 percent of the people who died from COVID-19 were fully vaccinated, which translates to 150 people out of more than 18,000 who died from the virus that month.

Fauci urged people to put aside the ideological or anti-science stances that are leading people to not get vaccinated, telling Todd, “And we do have the tools to counter it. So for goodness’ sakes, put aside all of those differences and realize that the common enemy is the virus.”

“When you have a situation like you have today, where you have a formidable enemy in the virus that has tragically really disrupted our planet now for about a year and a half, destructive — destroyed economies, have just disrupted us in every possible way, and yet we do have a countermeasure that’s highly, highly effective. And that’s the reason why it’s all the more sad and all the more tragic why it isn’t being completely implemented in this country,” Fauci said.

“And we have a tool, a highly effective tool against this virus. And we in our country are very fortunate, Chuck. We have enough vaccines to vaccinate essentially everybody in the country. And there are people throughout the world who would do anything to get vaccines,” he added.

WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci tells #MTP, “We could vaccinate everybody [in the U.S.] if they want to” receive the vaccine.

Dr. Fauci: “There are people throughout the world who would do anything to get the vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/1goTN9cuGH

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 4, 2021

Biden on Sunday, during his remarks delivered before the fireworks show, said getting vaccinated is “the most patriotic thing you can do.”

“So, please, if you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it — do it now for yourself, for your loved ones, for your community and for your country,” Biden said.

He added that, “while the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this: It no longer controls our lives.”