Top US Infectious Disease Specialist Calls for Vaccinations to Stop Virus Mutations

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci called for mass vaccinations to stop the COVID-19 virus from mutating.

Fauci stressed that even those who do not belong to major risk groups, are young and healthy, can still contribute negatively to the spread of the virus and must be vaccinated.

"You are living in a society. And if you become the vehicle for the virus to go from you to someone else to someone else, you are helping to propagate the virus. There's a very firm tenet that a virus cannot mutate, unless it is replicating, and, if you allow the virus to freely replicate chronically in society, it will mutate," he said in an interview to the USA Today.

If the virus is allowed to mutate, it can create such variants as Delta, which is more infectious and spreads much more rapidly than the original alpha variant, according to Fauci.

The US has been gradually re-introducing some COVID-related restrictions, such as wearing masks in public amid the spread of the Delta variant. Even though roughly 70% of the country's adult population has already been vaccinated, the number of cases continues to grow rapidly once again and exceeded an average of 100,000 per day.