Anthony Fauci
Anthony FauciMany NBA players apprehensive about promoting vaccines COVID-19: White House report says teacher vaccination is not required for schools to reopen., the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, said on Thursday that a vaccine for a variant strain of the coronavirus that is believed to have originated in South Africa is likely to take “several months”.
“It will probably take several months,” said Fauci, asked about the timeline for developing the vaccine by Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC.
“We are, for example, already working with the Moderna company. Pfizer is doing this alone, I’m sure. It is a good company, a great company ”, he added. “But what we are doing is working with them to get a sample of the vaccine that you can actually code for the protein that is the appropriate protein for the South African isolate.”
Fauci added that “there is sufficient damping in the vaccine’s effectiveness so that there is still some protection, especially against serious diseases. So while the vaccine may not protect against mild to moderate illnesses with the South African isolate, when you look at the data, it strongly suggests that it will work very well against serious illnesses, that is, keeping people out of the hospital and preventing them to die. “
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases added that “finally, what we are doing, in the expectation that we may need to use this – we do not know yet – is to do now other versions of the vaccine that are specifically directed against the South African isolate” .
Also on Thursday, Fauci warned that extreme weather conditions in some regions of the country would likely cause delays in vaccination.
“We will only have to make up for it as soon as the weather gets a little better, the ice melts and we get the trucks and people out and put the vaccine in people’s arms,” Fauci told MSNBC on Thursday. “We will just have to make up for it, that is, double the time when it clears up.”