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- Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, refused to detail a potential timeline for when vaccines would be available for children under 12 years old, saying "let's let the process play out."
- Speaking to Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, Fauci argued that experts and the public "shouldn't get ahead" of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the matter. Instead, they should trust that regulators will do their job "carefully and expeditiously."
- Still, Fauci pointed to an FDA advisory committee meeting in a couple of weeks as the likely event that will determine whether and when vaccines get an okay for use in kids.
- Commenting on the general outlook for COVID, Fauci once again urged people to get vaccinated, contending that this will prevent the development of new variants to the virus.
- In this way, he asserted that unvaccinated people are "propagating the outbreak" by giving COVID "the freedom to spread."
- Asked about Merck's (NYSE:MRK) anti-COVID pill, which recently performed well in a late-stage study, Fauci stated that a workable treatment for the disease doesn't replace vaccination as a way of fighting the pandemic.
- "It is always, always better not to get infected than to get infected and have to get treated," he said.
- Want more from Dr. Fauci? See what he said last month about booster shots.
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