Chances of effective COVID vaccine not great: Fauci bats for continued preventive measures

Top infectious disease expert and White House advisor Dr Anthony Fauci on Friday said that the chances of at least 98 per cent effective vaccine are slim. While speaking Brown University School of Public Health, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, asserted that even if a vaccine is in place, public health measures will still be needed to keep the pandemic under control.

“We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50 per cent or 60 per cent. I’d like it to be 75 per cent or more. But the chances of it being 98 per cent effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach,” Fauci said.

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READ | COVID-19 Pandemic Is 'going Away', Says Donald Trump Contradicting Anthony Fauci

He opined that the vaccine would just serve as a means to bring the pandemic under control to a certain extent and not completely eradicate the pandemic, meaning the COVID-19 guidelines and health care protocols are here to stay for a long time.

“You’ve got to think of the vaccine as a tool to be able to get the pandemic to no longer be a pandemic, but to be something that’s well-controlled,” he said. 

Fauci further said that studies of Moderna Inc’s (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine could produce definitive data in November or December of this year.

Although being the White House advisor, Fauci and US President Donald Trump have been making contradicting statements.

Trump contradicted the previous remarks made by Fauci, in a press briefing on August 5. While Trump said that the coronavirus outbreak is going to ‘go away’, Fauci had denied the possibility of COVID-19 to disappear. According to Fauci, the virus is highly transmissible, and therefore, it is highly unlikely it would be completely eradicated from the world.

Fauci's statements come even as the US-based biotechnology company, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate has proven to be effective on animals. The vaccine candidate by Moderna was found to protect mice from infection with the novel coronavirus. As per the study published in the renowned journal, Nature, on August 5. 

As per the study published in the renowned journal, Nature, on August 5, the coronavirus vaccine candidate named mRNA-1273 induced both potent neutralizing antibody responses and prevents the coronavirus infection in the lungs as well as noses of the mice without any evidence of immunopathology. The vaccine had previously shown positive results when tested on monkeys. The vaccine is currently under phase three of evaluation.

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