Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that other countries must “chip in” to aid India as the country groans under a surge in coronavirus cases.
“They’ve got to get their resources, not only from within but also from without, and that’s the reason why other countries need to chip in to be able to get either supplies for the Indians to make their own vaccines or to get vaccines donated,” Fauci told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during an appearance Sunday on the network.
Fauci, who serves as chief medical advisor to the president and heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, emphasized that India must “do really what the Chinese did” a year ago and set up field hospitals.
“You’ve got to get that. You can’t have people out on the street not having a hospital bed,” he said, adding that the oxygen supply situation in India is also critical.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on the COVID-19 crisis in India: "The end game of this all, George, is going to be to get people vaccinated." https://t.co/ZDW8CrXSez pic.twitter.com/tErbWcRm8f
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 9, 2021
“The end game,” though, is to get people vaccinated, Fauci said.
Fauci noted that one way to get India more vaccines would be to have large drug companies “scale up in a great way” the production of vaccines in order to get “hundreds of millions of doses” to the Indian people.
India is the largest producer of vaccines in the world, but the country is currently suffering from a shortage in medical supplies and hospital space as it sees record numbers of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Fauci also recommended shutting down the Indian government in order to combat the latest coronavirus surge, saying that the move would help slow transmission of the deadly pathogen.
“There are other ways too, like shutting down the government,” Fauci said. “I have advised them in the past that you really need to do that. You’ve got to shut down,” Fauci said. “I believe several of the Indian states have already done that. But you need to break the chain of transmission.”
On Tuesday, President Biden’s restrictions on travel to the U.S. from India went into effect. Shortly beforehand, the Biden administration, private companies, and nonprofits began sending aid to India including oxygen and raw materials for vaccines.
Last week, the Biden administration expressed support for waiving the patents for coronavirus vaccines, which would allow entities that did not invent the vaccines to begin producing them.
“You said the companies should be scaling up, but many of those companies say that President Biden’s plan to have these patent waivers is going to prevent them from scaling up. It’s going to hamper the supply chain and actually set back the vaccine production effort,” Stephanopoulos remarked to Fauci.
“I don’t think that’s the case, George. They can scale up.” Fauci said. “They’ve done an extraordinary amount. You’ve got to give them credit. They’ve really just really done something that is really quite impressive in the way they’ve gotten their vaccine supply up and out for the rest of the world.”
Stephanopoulos also asked Fauci about the CDC’s mask guidance, asking whether it is “time to start relaxing the indoor mask mandates” now that more than 151 million Americans have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
“We do need to start being more liberal as we get more people vaccinated,” Fauci responded.