People who’ve been fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus are largely safe to gather with others who have done the same, said Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Biden told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that the risk of vaccinated individuals gathering is minimal.
“You can start getting together as individual people, even though the risk is not zero, the risk becomes extremely low when you have both parties vaccinated,” Fauci said Thursday. “My professional judgment is that when my daughter wants to come in here and she is doubly vaccinated, I’m going to have her over to the house, and I’m going to give her a big hug that I haven’t been able to do for a year.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet released guidelines on vaccinated people congregating.
As of Friday, the U.S. has administered roughly 70.5 million of its 94.3 million available vaccine doses, with 22.6 million people having received both doses of one of the two-shot vaccines currently approved for use, according to the CDC.