Dr. Fauci: COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect ‘overly well’ against infection

Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health says available COVID-19 vaccines “don’t protect overly well” against infection but can stave off the possibility of hospitalization or death.

The 81-year-old doctor, speaking to Fox News, used his recent bout with the virus as an example. He pointed to his status as a vaccinated-and-boosted person as the reason behind his recovery.

“Even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” he said on “Your World” with host Neil Cavuto late Tuesday. “And that’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course.”

Dr. Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Biden and one of the leading voices in the COVID-19 response, also received a round of Paxlovid, an antiviral drug from Pfizer, after catching the virus like many other Americans.

Early in the vaccine push, government officials initially hoped the COVID-19 vaccines would protect people from getting infected at all.

That seemed to be true at first, but the onset of powerful variants of the virus, combined with waning immunity from the shots after several months, blunted that hope.