Top US infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has hinted at an authorized coronavirus vaccine being effective only 50-60% of the time, suggesting that consistent public health measures will still be needed to keep the pandemic under control.
At a webinar hosted by Brown University, Dr. Fauci said, “We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50% or 60%. I’d like it to be 75% or more. But the chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.”
Lockdown measures imposed to keep the virus from spreading have devastated the US economy, which suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression in the second quarter, with gross domestic product dropping at its steepest pace in at least 73 years.
As infections have spiked around the country after states started to open up, public health experts, including Dr. Fauci, have stressed the importance of steps that each citizen can take, including social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks.
Fauci expected that studies of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine could produce definitive data in November or December of this year.
The infectious diseases expert expects tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to be available by early 2021, and a billion doses by the end of that year.
Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump put forward a more upbeat forecast, saying that the country could have a coronavirus vaccine before the Nov. 3 election.
