A former Food and Drug Administration chief says there’s little chance a coronavirus vaccine will be available this year.
“The likelihood that we’re going to have a vaccine for widespread use in 2020 is extremely low,” the former commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said during an appearance Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” CNN reported. “I think we need to think of that as largely a 2021 event, and if we do have a vaccine available in 2020, it’s likely to be used in a much more targeted fashion — almost in a therapeutic sense, to protect very high-risk populations,”
The Trump administration reportedly is pressuring FDA to approve a vaccine before Election Day on Nov. 3, despite wariness among both the public and medical professionals about the safety of a vaccine produced before then.
As of Monday morning, the U.S. has roughly 6.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases, including 189,000 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.