A biomedical scientist on Sunday said the United States needs a vaccine in order to eradicate the coronavirus, but that there will be ways to prevent and treat COVID-19 until that happens.
In remarks to ABC News’ "This Week," Regeneron Pharmaceuticals president and chief scientific officer George Yancopoulos hailed the push in private industry.
"We need these sort of efforts at [Johnson & Johnson] and others are doing them,” he said, referring to J&J’s human trial for a vaccine candidate set for September.
"We need the sort of efforts that we're doing that can provide these immediate sources of both prevention and treatment that can have an impact until we get a vaccine."
Regeneron is developing a COVID-19 antibody treatment to prevent and treat the disease, using one of their drugs, Kevzara, in clinical studies to start in June.
"It's possible that within a month or two after that that we would actually have data that our antibody cocktail could be important stopgap until we get an effective and safe vaccine," he said.