In a new interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association above, Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAID), said he expects the US will have 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine before the end of the year. “Then, by the beginning of 2021, we hope to have a couple hundred million doses,” he said.
The vaccine in development by Moderna in partnership with the NAID will enter final clinical trials this summer and the company will start cranking out doses at scale before the testing is complete. Meanwhile, several other promising candidates have also been fast-tracked around the world.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that with the multiple candidates we have with different platforms, that we are going to have a vaccine that will make it deployable,” Fauci said.
From CNN:
Fauci said he is a little more concerned about what the durability of the response will be. People develop antibodies to fight common colds caused by other strains of coronavirus, but that protection generally only lasts about a year. That might mean people would need a fresh vaccine every year, as is the case with influenza.