America’s doctor, Dr. Fauci, warns that early COVID-19 vaccines will only prevent symptoms from arising – not block infection.
‘If the vaccine allows you to prevent initial infection, that would be great,’ he said. ‘[But] the primary endpoint [is] to prevent clinically recognizable disease.’
As for the timing, Fauci said he is cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a vaccine by the end of the year, but that these early vaccines — there are four so far — may only be 50 to 60 % effective.
“We will know whether a vaccine is safe and effective by the end of November, beginning of December,” the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said. “The amount of doses that will be available in December will not certainly be enough to vaccinate everybody — you’ll have to wait several months into 2021.’
Speaking to BBC, the good doctor was asked if Trump is correct in saying that the United States is “rounding the corner” in the course of the pandemic, Fauci said he believes this is untrue.
“The data speak for themselves,” Fauci said.“Unfortunately, I am sorry to see what I’m viewing from a distance, what I’m seeing in the UK … after getting hit pretty badly the way we did, you went down to a pretty low level, but now you’re starting to escalate in the same manner that we are here,” he added.