DENVER (KDVR) — During a virtual news conference with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Dr. Anthony Fauci said front line workers and at-risk populations will get the vaccine first, but the average person in Colorado could start to get vaccinated by mid- to late April.

“You can expeditiously vaccinate people, that by the time you get to the mid- to the end of the second quarter of 2021 — namely May, June, July, August — you very likely could have overwhelming majority of the people vaccinated,” said the nation’s top infectious disease doctor.

If there is good uptake, Fauci said that could give us herd immunity. But how many Coloradans need to get vaccinated to achieve that? Dr. Thomas Campbell, the chief clinical research officer for UCHealth said, “If we can get to 80 percent vaccination or even something slightly lower than that, there are some models that suggest that that may be able to provide us with protective herd immunity.”

Campbell says people who have had COVID should still get the vaccine. 

“Getting a vaccination would boost whatever sort of response they’ve had before,” he said.

He expects that we will continue with mask-wearing and social distancing for some time.

“I think for this school year we will certainly still have those measures in place,” Campbell said.

The virus will still be in circulation, he said, but with the vaccinations he hopes it will not be deadly.

“The Moderna data, in addition to showing 94.1 percent efficacy, also showed that none of the patients who contracted COVID-19 in the vaccine arm got severe illness,” he said.