Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his optimism that the United States could have a vaccine against the coronavirus ready for widespread use by the end of the year.
“I still think that we have a good chance, if all the things fall in the right place, that we might have a vaccine that would be deployable by the end of the year, by December — November-December,” Fauci said Wednesday on CNN. “What we’re doing is we’re proceeding what we call at risk … that means you take the next step before you have the results of the previous step.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, assured the public the federal government is not sacrificing safety or efficacy for speed when it comes to the development of a vaccine against the COVID-19 virus.
“There are a lot of landmines and hiccups that occur,” he said. “But the kind of acceleration that we’re doing, which I must emphasize, does not come at the expense of safety or scientific integrity.”
President Trump has promised a vaccine against the coronavirus by the end of the year. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 1.4 million people in the U.S. have contracted the virus, and nearly 100,000 U.S. citizens have died since March.
