US top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged Ex-US President Donald Trump to encourage his supporters to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as recent polls show high levels of hesitancy and reluctance among Republicans.
Dr. Fauci said on Sunday noted that ‘it would make all the difference in the world’ if the former president used his ‘incredible influence‘ among Republicans to push them to accept coronavirus jabs.
‘If he came out and said: ‘Go and get vaccinated. It’s really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country,’ it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him,” Fauci said during an interview on the Fox News Sunday programme monitored by Africa Today News.
The former president’s office is yet to respond to the recent call as at on Sunday.
Trump, who downplayed the threat of the virus while in office, urged people to get vaccinated late last month during a conservative political gathering in Florida.
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But he was widely criticised for his administration’s handling of the pandemic, which has killed more than 534,000 people across the US and pushed millions of families into economic hardship amid a pandemic-related downturn.
The US still has the most COVID-19 cases and coronavirus-related deaths in the world, with more than 29.4 million infections and more than 534,000 deaths as of Sunday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Fauci’s comments come as Biden has sought to speed up inoculation efforts as COVID-19 infection rates slow nationally. The US president last week said he expects all adults would be eligible for a vaccine by May 1.
Just over 20 percent of the US population has received at least one COVID-19 jab so far, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while 11.1 percent are considered fully vaccinated.
The country has administered more than 105 million jabs to date.
But a recent poll conducted by Monmouth University and released on March 8 shows that one in four Americans say they do not plan to get vaccinated.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK