NIH Director: I Believe We’ll Have Vaccine by End of Year

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins stated that if one of the coronavirus vaccine trials is successful, “tens of millions of doses” will be available by the end of the year, and that he believes by the end of the year “we will have a vaccine…that looks like it’s working” and that everyone will have access to one by the spring.

Collins said that because of the use of “at-risk manufacturing,” “we will have, if one of these trials shows success, tens of millions of doses of that vaccine ready to go, by the end of 2020, the end of this calendar year. That’s never been done at this speed before. We’re not compromising on safety. We’ll be sure the thing works. But if it does, we’ll be ready to go for the highest-risk people, as soon as possible.”

He added, “I think, again, cautious optimism, we will have a vaccine, I believe, at least one, maybe more than one, that looks like it’s working by the end of this calendar year. We will then have some doses to give to the highest-risk people. But for everybody to have access to the vaccine, it’ll be the spring.”

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