Dr. Anthony Fauci says COVID-19 boosters are critical to fighting the omicron variant

The nation's top infectious disease expert says booster shots are critical to the fighting the current surge of coronavirus cases nationwide.

On Monday’s Morning Edition, A Martínez spoke with chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci about President Biden’s winter plan to fight the COVID-19 surge.

Listen here or continue below to read excerpts from their conversation.

Dr. Fauci says booster shots are critical:

Boosting individuals who have already been vaccinated is absolutely critical for the reasons that you just mentioned on the piece. Namely, we get a diminution in protection when you have omicron as opposed to delta with the vaccines that we've used. But when you boost, you bring it back up to a rather high level to the point where you can actually block what would be the ultimate effect of omicron.”

Dr. Fauci says 50 million are still unvaccinated, as people congregate indoors in the winter.