Fauci says Covid deaths are ‘preventable’ as he pleads for Americans to ‘put differences aside and get vaccinated’

DR Anthony Fauci has said Covid deaths are “avoidable and preventable” and pleaded for Americans to “put differences aside and get vaccinated”.

The president’s chief medical advisor, 80, made the comments after Joe Biden’s administration missed its target of getting 70 per cent of US adults jabbed with at least one shot of the Covid vaccine by July 4.

In June nearly 100,000 people died in the US from the coronavirus.

Fauci said during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press: “If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 per cent of them are unvaccinated about 0.8 per cent are vaccinated.

“No vaccine is perfect, but when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and deaths, it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”

“Obviously, there’s gonna 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,” he added.

“We’re dealing with a historic situation with this pandemic, and we do have the tools to counter it,” he continued. “So for goodness’ sakes, put aside all of those differences and realize that the common enemy is the virus.”

Fauci also urged those who had been fully vaccinated with both jabs to “go the extra mile” and still wear a mask.

Todd stated that Mississippi has the lowest vaccination rate in the US and he asked Fauci if he would wear a mask if he travelled to the state.

Fauci replied: “I think there would be a good reason to do that.”

“I think there would be a good reason to do that because as we’ve said so often that vaccines are not, even as good as they are and highly effective, nothing is 100%,” Fauci said. “And if you put yourself in an environment in which you have a high level of viral dynamics and a very low level of vaccine you might want to go the extra step and say, ‘When I’m in that area where there’s a considerable degree of viral circulation, I might want to go the extra mile, to be cautious enough to make sure that I get the extra added level of protection even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective.”

Since the start of the pandemic more than 621,000 people in the US have died from the virus.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that three in 10 adults have not received the vaccine and “definitely” or “probably” don’t plan to get it.

Of that group, 73 per cent said officials have exaggerated the risks posed by the delta variant.

Meanwhile, nearly 80 per cent believe they have little or no risk of getting sick from Covid.