The COVID-19 impact in the U.S. is declining and there is now some "aspirational" hope for a vaccine to be in use before the end of this year, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
"Certainly the deaths are clearly coming down, the hospitalizations are coming down, the cases are coming down, but less steeply," Fauci told Sunday's "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y.
"It's a slow decline, but going in the right direction. But I'd like to see it a little more sharply decline."
Fauci acknowledged there are four or five vaccine candidates the coronavirus task force is working with in hopes one might be in use by the end of the year.
"We will be entering at least one of those candidates into a phase 3 study in July, which means trying to determine if it’s effective – if it really works," Fauci told host John Catsimatidis. "We're hoping that, by the time we get into the mid to late fall, we'll be able to get some data to indicate whether or not it works."
Fauci added, "if we are fortunate enough," "we may have a vaccine that we could be utilizing toward the very end of this year."
"This is aspirational: There's no guarantee," he cautioned.
As for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, China did the U.S. and the world a "disservice" by failing to permit doctors to speak out about human-to-human transmission, according to Fauci.
"I think the Chinese authorities, that did not allow the scientists to speak out as openly and transparently as they could have, really did a disservice, because at the beginning of the outbreak, they were claiming that this was just animal-to-human transmission, and there really wasn't a human-to-human transmission at all," Fauci lamented.
"And they held that line for a few weeks. And then it became very clear when the scientists were able to talk about it, that, in fact, there was human-to-human transmission that was at least very efficient.
"It's another example of the unfortunate situation of lack of transparency early on," Fauci said.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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