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While many leading teachers unions and advocacy groups have praised the new guidelines, several have raised concerns about how the CDC standards are still not being met in many schools in underprivileged communities.

When pressed by Stephanopoulos how confident he was that school districts have the resources they need to reopen safely, Fauci said, “Schools really do need more resources. And that's the reason why the national relief act that we're talking about getting passed, we need that. The schools need more resources.”

The CDC guidance comes as new coronavirus variants -- particularly strains first observed in the United Kingdom and South Africa -- reach the United States, testing the efficacy of new vaccines and the response from the Biden administration. In fact, British government scientists said in a new report Sunday that the U.K. variant is likely more deadly than other strains of the virus.

\"PHOTO:
Bloomberg via Getty Images
PHOTO: Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wears a protective mask while listening to President Joe Biden, left, speak during a tour at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., Feb. 11, 2021.
>

Although Fauci acknowledged that the U.K. variant has already reached the U.S., he told Stephanopoulos, “The somewhat comforting news is that vaccine that we are now currently distributing, the Moderna vaccine and Pfizer vaccine, clearly work against the (U.K.) variant.”

Despite the efficacy of vaccines on the British variant, the White House chief medical adviser sounded more cautious on the South African strain of the virus. “The data that we got from South Africa is really quite sobering,” Fauci said.

“We do know that it evades the protection from some of the monoclonal antibodies and it diminishes somewhat the capability and the effectiveness of the vaccine to block it,” he added.

With new reports that the first known patient to catch the South African variant after previously contracting COVID-19 is in critical condition, Stephanopoulos pressed Fauci about the risk of reinfection with the new strain.

“In South Africa, there were people who got infected with the original virus, recovered, and then got reinfected with this new variant, the South African variant, which tells us that prior infection does not protect you against reinfection, at least with this particular variant,” Fauci responded.

Still, the White House chief medical adviser said the vaccines do present a degree of efficacy against the South African variant. “Somewhat good news is it looks like the vaccine is better than natural infection in preventing you from getting reinfected with the South Africa isolate,” he said.

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