Fauci: Open to speeding up boosters

He says 100,000 deaths foreseeable by December if vaccine hesitance persists

In this May 11, 2021, file photo, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Photo via AP, File)
In this May 11, 2021, file photo, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that the door is open to administering booster shots in the U.S. sooner than eight months after a completed covid-19 vaccination, a possibility that President Joe Biden has raised.

"We're still planning on eight months. That was the calculation we made," Fauci, Biden's chief medical adviser, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." However, "we're totally open to any variation in that based on the data," he added.

Fauci also said he favors requiring shots for schoolchildren as "a good idea" for the U.S., where only people 12 years and older are eligible for vaccination.

"This is not something new," he said on CNN. "We have mandates in many places in schools, particularly public schools," for diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, rubella and hepatitis.

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