© Getty ImagesFauci predicts high schoolers will receive coronavirus vaccinations this fall
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted on Sunday that high school students across the country will be able to receive COVID-19 vaccines in the early fall of this year.
"The tests are being done to determine both safety and comparable immunogenicity in high school students. We predict that high school students will very likely be able to be vaccinated by the fall term," Fauci told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"Maybe not the very first day, but certainly the early part of the fall for that fall educational term," Fauci continued.
The nation's leading infectious disease expert also predicted that younger students in elementary schools will "likely be able to get vaccinated by the very first quarter of 2022" and that studies are ongoing to determine if vaccines are safe for younger children.
Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Sunday also predicted that high school students will receive COVID-19 vaccines this year.
"I think it's probable that we will be vaccinating high school kids at some point this year," Gottlieb said on "Face the Nation." "One of the vaccines, the Pfizer vaccine - I'm on board of that company - is already approved down at 16. There's studies underway with all the vaccines looking at younger age populations with their vaccines and so I think we'll be in a position to be ready to vaccinate a high school age population sometime this fall."
Fauci, who serves as chief medical adviser to President Biden, also told CBS's Margaret Brennan on Sunday that the decline in COVID-19 cases across the country in recent weeks has started to plateau, calling on elected officials not to immediately reverse coronavirus health precautions.
"The message we're saying is that we do want to come back carefully and slowly about pulling back on mitigation methods," Fauci "But don't turn that switch on and off because it really would be risky to have yet again another surge, which we do not want to happen because we're plateauing at a- quite a high level. Sixty to 70,000 new infections per day is quite high."
Last week, the governors of Mississippi and Texas lifted coronavirus restrictions in their states. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Tuesday cited coronavirus vaccinations in the state as a reason to lift capacity limits, mask mandates and more.