COVID-19 Vaccine: ‘I Am Cautiously Optimistic Of Early Development,’ Says American Expert

United Nations: The current clinical trials could result in the possibility of developing a vaccine for COVID-19 by the end of this year or early next year.

Expressing this hope, America’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that he is ‘cautiously optimistic’ of the same.

The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the coronavirus is likely to continue to emerge, and global collaboration and transparency are critical to deal with the future pandemics, reported TimesNownews.com.

“The lessons we’ve learned from the coronavirus is they have pandemic potential, they’re likely to continue to emerge. Good public health measures are critical to controlling them. Global collaboration and transparency are critical if we are to get a containment of this extraordinary assault on the human population, a viral disease that spreads rapidly and as a high degree of morbidity and mortality,” he said in his recorded remarks during an online session on Confronting COVID-19 Through Innovation and Research: Lessons Learned from the Pandemic’, reported TimesNownews.com.

A few of the clinical trials of some vaccine candidates have completed phase 1/2 status, he said. Some trials that will be going into phase three sometime at the end of July and then others will follow in August, September and October, the report said.

The report quoted Fauci as saying, “Hopefully we’ll be able to get some information, such as with this particular one representative vaccine that we started here in January. Phase one looks good, very promising data on the induction of neutralising antibody, and will go into trial at the end of July. There are 5-7 candidates that are going into clinical trials at different stages.”

“The Moderna coronavirus vaccine is showing promising results, which makes me cautiously optimistic. Although you can never, ever predict with any certainty, whether a vaccine is going to be safe and effective,” Fauci was quoted as saying by TimesNownews.com.