U.S.’s Fauci hopeful for vaccine late this year, early 2021
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday he is cautiously optimistic there will be a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year or early 2021, but warned that the next few weeks will be critical to tamping down coronavirus hot spots around the U.S.
Fauci and other top health officials also said they have not been asked to slow down testing for coronavirus, a controversial issue after U.S. President Donald Trump said last weekend that he had asked them to do just that because it was uncovering too many infections. Trump said earlier in the day that he wasn’t kidding.
“We will be doing more testing,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, told a House committee.
The U.S. has tested more than 27 million people, with about 2.3 million — or 8.4 per cent — testing positive.
The health officials returned to Capitol Hill at a fraught moment in the U.S.’s pandemic response, with coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations.
“We’ve been hit badly,” Fauci said. He said he was “really quite concerned” about rising community spread in some states, including Arizona, which Trump was visiting Tuesday to view construction of a border wall and for a rally at a megachurch.
“The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges,” he said.
Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was testifying along with Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Robert Redfield and others.
Since Fauci’s last appearance at a high-profile hearing more than a month ago, the U.S. has begun emerging from weeks of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But it’s being done in an uneven way, with some states far less cautious than others. And among those, Arizona, Florida and Texas are seeing worrisome increases in cases.
Fauci has continued to urge the American public to practise social distancing. About 2.3 million Americans have been sickened in the pandemic, and 120,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
There is still no vaccine for COVID-19 and there are no specific treatments, although the antiviral drug remdesivir has been shown to help some patients, as well as a steroid called dexamethasone.