COVID-19 Round-Up: Fauci Endorses Vaccine Mandates

Inside Higher Ed

Elizabeth Redden

August 11, 2021

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, endorsed COVID-19 vaccine mandates for universities and schools on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday.

“We are in a critical situation now,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases. “We’ve had 615,000+ deaths and we are in a major surge now as we’re going into the fall into the school season. This is very serious business. You would wish that people would see why it’s so important to get vaccinated.

“You’re not going to get mandates centrally from the federal government,” he continued. ” But when you’re talking about local mandates, mandates for schools, for teachers, for universities, for colleges, I’m sorry, I know people must like to have their individual freedom and not be told to do something, but I think we’re in such a serious situation now that under certain circumstances mandates should be done.”

Fauci added that he expects more universities will feel empowered to mandate vaccines after they gain full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Currently, the three publicly available COVID-19 vaccines are approved through the FDA’s emergency use authorization process.

The New York Times reported last week that the FDA expects to give full approval to the Pfizer vaccine by early September.

More than 600 colleges have mandated COVID-19 vaccines to date, according to a tracker maintained by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Continue Reading