Fauci said that COVID-19 vaccines would take five years to develop?

Former President Donald Trump said that Anthony Fauci – the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – said that a vaccine against COVID-19 would take several years to develop.

The claim

Trump made the comments in a Fox News interview on Thursday with Laura Ingraham in Ingraham’s angle. According to the former president, Fauci had said that the COVID-19 vaccines could take three, four or five years to develop.

Trump said, “We received a vaccine in nine months, Laura, and it was supposed to take five years. Fauci said it was probably never going to happen. I mean, Fauci was saying three years, four years, five years – a lot of people said 12 years. And I did it in nine months. It really is a great achievement. “

The facts

Among Fauci’s early references to the development schedule for potential vaccines against what was then widely known as the “new coronavirus” came an article published by the biotechnology industry news site Biocentury on January 22, 2020 – just after the first COVID-19 cases reported in the United States.

“We will probably be able, unless there are unforeseen blockages, to start a Phase I test in about three months,” Fauci told BioCentury.

He said NIAID was partnering with Moderna on an mRNA vaccine against the disease now known as COVID-19.

Fauci said that the quickest a vaccine can be ready for use in an emergency is one year, although the process can take up to two years, BioCentury reported.

There is no evidence to suggest, even at this early stage, that Fauci thought that a COVID-19 vaccine would never be developed.

At the end of the year, Fauci suggested a similar schedule during a Senate committee hearing.

“It will take at least a year to a year and a half to have a vaccine that we can use,” said Fauci on March 3, 2020.

As the development of COVID-19 vaccines progressed at high speed throughout 2020, Fauci made more predictions about when they would be available.

In August 2020, he told Reuters he expected “tens of millions” of doses to be available in early 2021.

By mid-December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had authorized the BioNTech and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use. The injection was developed, tested and authorized in record time – less than 10 months.

The decision

False

There is no evidence that Fauci said that a COVID-19 vaccine would never be developed, or that the process would take three, four or five years, as Trump said.

Newsweek, in partnership with NewsGuard, is dedicated to providing accurate and verifiable health information and vaccines. With NewsGuard’s HealthGuard browser extension, users can verify that a website is a reliable source of health information. Visit the Newsweek VaxFacts website to learn more and download the HealthGuard browser extension.