Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday that as many as 20 million people could get coronavirus vaccinations around the end of the year.
He said by that time there could be as many as 25 million doses of vaccine available from Pfizer and 15 million doses available from Moderna. The vaccination takes two shots so that would mean 20 million people could get protection.
He said it could happen by the end of December or early January. “That’s what we’re hoping,” he said in an interview at the STAT News 2020 Summit.
He said he hoped that in the ensuing months the pace would pick up.
“As we get into January, February, and March, there will be more that they will be able to scale up. By February that should be 30 of Pfizer, 25 Moderna. These are numbers that were given to me," he said, noting that he was the “science person” not the “supply people." That amount of doses could get 27.5 million people vaccinated.
“What I would like to see is that the most vulnerable get vaccinated within the first few months of 2021, and then subsequently beyond that we expeditiously vaccinate others,” he told STAT’s Helen Branswell in the interview.
“The question we always get asked is, 'When is the 25-year-old, 30-year-old person who has no underlying conditions, who’s perfectly healthy, when can that person, wind up getting a vaccine? ... That likely will start somewhere towards the end of April. So that as you get into May, June, and July, you’ll have people in the second quarter vaccinated who want to get vaccinated.”
In other remarks, Fauci, who is 79, said he had no thoughts of quitting or retiring. “For me to think about quitting is so completely out of the realm of reality -- there isn’t a chance in the world that I would do that.” He said he still felt on top of his game and “quitting is not in my DNA.”
Asked what he thought about president-elect Joe Biden’s grasp of, and appreciation for, science, Fauci said it was “considerable, in fact, if not profound from a number of standpoints.”
STAT News covers health, medicine, life sciences and the pharmaceutical business. It is part of Boston Globe Media Partners.
Martin Finucane can be reached at martin.finucane@globe.com.
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Dr. Fauci says as many as 20 million Americans could get vaccinations around the end of the year - The Boston Globe
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