Fauci: 'We could start talking about real normality again' in 2021
Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that life could return to normal by sometime next year with sufficient coronavirus vaccine production.
Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told CNN's David Axelrod on "The Axe Files" podcast that the companies behind potential vaccines told him "that they would have doses to the tunes of tens of millions early in the year, and up to hundreds of millions as we get well into 2021, and some companies say that even after awhile, you could get as many as a billion doses."
"The timetable you suggested of getting into 2021, well into the year, then I can think with a successful vaccine -- if we could vaccinate the overwhelming majority of the population -- we could start talking about real normality again," Fauci added. "But it is going to be a gradual process."
Fauci's comments come as the US surpassed 4 million officially recorded Covid-19 cases on Thursday -- with a quarter of that count coming in just the last 15 days -- and the accelerated search for a vaccine continues.
Early results of a closely watched Phase 1/2 trial published on Monday in The Lancet suggest a coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is safe and induces an immune response. However, researchers stressed more study is needed to know whether the vaccine protects people against the virus.
AstraZeneca told a US congressional hearing on Tuesday that it is on track to have a possible vaccine ready as early as September. But hours later, the head of the UK vaccine task force warned that a vaccine is unlikely to be made widely available before 2021. Meanwhile, other company executives said they were aiming for early 2021.
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