Fauci warns that pandemic is far from over
U.S. expert tells biotechnology group much remains unknown about virus
In a wide-ranging talk to biotech executives, Dr. Anthony Fauci delivered a grim assessment of the devastation wrought around the world by the coronavirus.
COVID-19 is the disease that Fauci always said would be his “worst nightmare” — a new, highly contagious respiratory infection that causes a significant amount of illness and death.
“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday during a conference held by BIO, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
“And it isn’t over yet.” His discussion with a moderator was conducted remotely and recorded for presentation to conference participants.
Although he had known that an outbreak like this could occur, one aspect has surprised him, he said, and that is “how rapidly it just took over the planet.”
An efficiently transmitted disease can spread worldwide in six months or a year, but “this took about a month,” Fauci said.
He attributed the rapid spread to the contagiousness of the virus, and to extensive world travel by infected people.
Vaccines are widely regarded as the best hope of stopping or at least slowing the pandemic, and Fauci said he was “almost certain” that more than one would be successful.
Several are already being tested in people, and at least one is expected to move into large, Phase 3 trials in July.
But much is still unknown about the disease and how it attacks the body, research that Fauci described as “a work in progress.”
“Oh my goodness,” Fauci said. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of really understanding.”
He described the pandemic as “shining a very bright light on something we’ve known for a very long time” — the health disparities and the harder effect of many illnesses on people of color, particularly African Americans.
The coronavirus has been a “double whammy” for black people, he said, first because they are more likely to be exposed to the disease by way of their employment in jobs that cannot be done remotely.
Second, they are more vulnerable to severe illness from the coronavirus because they have higher rates of underlying conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and chronic lung disease.