Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday he’s “cautiously optimistic” there will be a coronavirus vaccine in late fall or early winter.
Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, made the comments on the heels of Monday’s announcement that a clinical trial of a vaccine co-developed by his agency and Moderna has entered Phase Three.
During an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Fauci said the phase one trial results “were enough for us to see the kind of response that this vaccine induces in individuals.”
“And it induces the level of antibodies — which are the proteins that fight the virus— at a level was quite high, in the sense [that] it was comparable [to], if not better than, what we see in the recovery from natural infection,” Fauci told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. “And that’s really one of the issues when you’re dealing with vaccines. If you can induce a response that’s least as good as natural infection, that is a good predictor that you’re going to have a vaccine that works.
“Obviously, the proof of the pudding is you’ve got to do the trial,” he said. “It’s a large trial, 30,000 people are going to be in the trial, that will give us the answer. And yes, I am cautiously optimistic that as we get into the late fall and early winter, we will have an answer, and I believe it will be positive.”
