Dr. Anthony Fauci is offering up safety tips for the holiday season, telling vaccinated people that they can relax and celebrate with vaccinated family and friends.
Unvaccinated people, meanwhile, should take precautions.
This will be the first holiday season when people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, a major difference from last year when no one was fully vaccinated and many families stayed apart as the virus raged across the country.
“For groups that are vaccinated, I think we can enjoy the holiday season,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Fox News Sunday.
“When you’re in the family unit among people who are vaccinated, I think you should just enjoy the holidays as best you can in the family spirit,” added Fauci, who’s also the chief medical adviser to President Biden.
He urged those who are unvaccinated to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
“But if they’re not (vaccinated), they should do what the CDC recommends, is when you’re in an indoor setting, in a public indoor setting, to wear a mask,” Fauci said. “It’s very important.
“We know that masks work, and they could greatly diminish the likelihood that you’re going to get infected,” Fauci said, “Which is another reason why we keep saying why it’s so important to get vaccinated, because not only will it be good for your own health and that of your family, it will make it much easier for you to enjoy the kinds of things in society that you’d like to enjoy anyway.”
Fauci was also asked about boosters and mixing-and-matching vaccines.
Those who got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine will have a “degree of flexibility that will be left up to the individual” to get a booster from either Pfizer or Moderna, he said.
“The mix-and-match to which you refer shows that when you boost Moderna or Pfizer against the original J&J, you get a much higher antibody level,” Fauci said. “I believe there’s going to be a degree of flexibility of what a person who got the J&J originally can do, either with J&J or with the mix-and-match from other products.”
