Fauci raises doubt whether US government will be behind vaccine passports

US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci on Monday said that he doesn't think the US government will be the main mover behind vaccine passports, but those individual entities could do something with the idea.

"I doubt that the federal government will be the main mover of a vaccine passport concept," Fauci said on an episode of the Politico Dispatch podcast, according to CNN.

"They may be involved in making sure things are done fairly and equitably, but I doubt if the federal government is going to be the leading element of that."

"There may be theaters that say you don't get in unless you have proof of vaccination, there may be colleges or other educational institutions that do that," he said.

CNN reported that about 165 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to data published Sunday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC reported 165,053,746 total doses have been used so far -- about 79 per cent of the 207,891,295 doses delivered. About 3.4 million more doses than in the previous 24 hours, for a seven-day average of about 3.1 million doses per day.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is no "right or wrong" in advocating a vaccination strategy to delay a second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

"There really are different approaches and different opinions," Fauci said in an answer to a question from CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen during Monday's White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing.

"We have been concerned, and still are, that when you look at the level of protection after one dose, you can say is 80%, but it is somewhat of a tenuous 80%, because the level of, for example, neutralizing antibodies against the coronavirus, when you just leave it at one dose, the question is, how long does it last," he continued.

About 32 per cent of the population - 106 million people - have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 18.5 per cent of the population - about 61 million people - have been fully vaccinated.

( With inputs from ANI )