As the US wraps up its third week of vaccinations, Dr. Anthony Fauci made a major statement Friday about how they will proceed.
The US will continue giving two doses of the current coronavirus vaccines weeks apart, and will not follow the UK's decision to potentially delay second doses, Fauci told CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
"I would not be in favor of that," Fauci said when asked about the UK's new dosing plan. "We're going to keep doing what we're doing."
So far, the coronavirus vaccines approved in the US require two doses, taken three to four weeks apart.
On Wednesday, the British government announced that the UK would prioritize giving the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine "to those in the most high-risk group" and allow the second dose to be given up to 12 weeks later.
The UK adopted that strategy to give as many people as possible the first dose as quickly as possible. Even the first shot, UK medical officers have argued, would afford some amount of protection.
Asked on Thursday by NBC's "Today" show if the US should adopt the UK's plan, Fauci had answered, "That's under consideration."
But he told CNN Friday that this comment had been misinterpreted.
Pfizer and Moderna, the makers of the two vaccines given emergency use authorization in the US, studied the effectiveness of two doses a few weeks apart, not a few months apart, noted Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"The fact is we want to stick with what the science tells us, and the data that we have for both (vaccines) indicate you give a prime, followed by a boost in 21 days with Pfizer and 28 days with Moderna. And right now, that's the way we're going with it, and that's the decision that is made," he said Friday.
"We make decisions based on data. We don't have any data of giving a single dose and waiting for more than the normal period of time" to give the second dose, he added.
When Fauci told NBC that following the UK's example was "under consideration," he meant that some people -- not US health authorities -- were talking about it, he told CNN Friday.
"It was somewhat of a misinterpretation. I think some -- not everybody -- but people misinterpreted when I said it's under consideration [as] like we're going to change. We're not," he said.
People who were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine on December 14 are due soon to take their second shots.