Fauci: COVID-19 vaccine, treatment by autumn 'a bridge too far'

Fauci: COVID-19 vaccine, treatment by autumn ‘a bridge too far’

According to Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, it’s a bridge too far to consider that medical therapeutics and an efficacious vaccine could be at play in the United States at the end of August. That’s when 50 million American schoolchildren and 20 million college students consider returning to classes after moving to distance learning in March and April in the face of the novel coronavirus. Fauci’s remarks came during a 3-hour-plus Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing—conducted via video conferencing—on the state of pandemic response. Senators, led by Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), questioned Fauci, Robert Redfield, MD, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Admiral Brett Giroir, MD, the White House’s czar on COVID-19 testing, and Stephen Hahn, MD, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, on testing, surveillance, vaccine development, and therapeutics, and how all those factors might help the country come out of lockdown in the coming months.