Coronavirus vaccine could be ready before 2021, a ‘cautiously optimistic’ Fauci says

Feeling “cautiously optimistic,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress Tuesday that a COVID-19 vaccine could be available to the American public by the end of the year, or early 2021.

As the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Fauci served as a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, and helped to inform President Donald Trump during the early months of the pandemic. Tuesday, he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding the COVID-19 crisis.

“We feel cautiously optimistic, based on the concerted effort and the fact we are taking financial risks — not risks to safety, not risks to the integrity of the science, but financial risk to be able to be ahead of the game — so that when, and I believe it will be when and not if, we get favorable candidates with good results, we will be able to make them available to the American public,” Fauci said. “It would put us at the end of this calendar year and the beginning of 2021.”

Fauci said that the National Institutes of Health are cooperating with multiple drug companies working to create a vaccine.

“We are now mounting a major effort in which we’re collaborating with industry in public, private partnership to get vaccine trials that are developed that harmonize with each other,” he said.

Manufacturers are racing to the finish line and several are closing in, according to Fauci, singling out one company in particular that he says will be moving into “phase 3” in July -- large-scale human testing. There are four phases in vaccine trials, according to the CDC.

The firm, Moderna, plans to try its experimental vaccine on 30,000 volunteers, Time reported.

If Fauci’s prediction holds true, it would beat earlier expectations of many experts, and be the fastest a vaccine was ever produced, according to Vox. The mumps vaccine currently holds that title, and it took four years.

In April, The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations said it would take at least 12-18 months, McClatchy News reported.

This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Coronavirus vaccine could be ready before 2021, a ‘cautiously optimistic’ Fauci says."