Dire situation in India proves no country is safe from COVID-19 pandemic: Anthony Fauci

Anthony Fauci, leading US expert on disease control, stated on Friday that the "dire situation" that has now emerged in India after it seemed that the country had avoided the worst impact of the COVID-19 pandemic indicates that no nation is safe from a global pandemic. He added that climate and youth are no protections against a global pandemic. Fauci serves as a medical advisor to US President Joe Biden.

During a White House briefing on Friday, Fauci said that early on in the pandemic when lower-income and middle-income countries didn't have many cases, "people would say, 'Maybe there's something special about climate, about this, about the youth'".

"What this (surge) is telling us -- in Africa and in India -- (is) that when you have a global pandemic, it is a global pandemic and there are no countries that are really safe from it," said Fauci.

Fauci added that India needed the COVID-19 vaccines although variants of the coronavirus have developed in the country and that efficacy of the vaccines against these variants needs to be studied.

"They have a situation where there are variants that have arisen. We have not yet fully characterised the variants and the relationship between the ability of the vaccines to protect, but we're assuming, clearly, that they need vaccines," Fauci noted.

"They need to get their people vaccinated because that's the only way we're going to turn that around," Fauci added.

Fauci explained that the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) is consulting with the Indian government and providing technical assistance.

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