‘A Bridge Too Far’: Dr. Fauci Rules Out Coronavirus Vaccine Being Ready for Schools in 2020

Returning to school in the fall would be a “bridge too far” for American students, Dr. Anthony Fauci told senators Tuesday.

“There will be 5,000 campuses across the country trying to welcome 20 million college students, 100,000 public schools welcoming 50 million students,” Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander noted during a virtual hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “What would you say to the chancellor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, or the principal of a public school, about how to persuade parents and students to return to school in August?”

Fauci replied, “The idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far. As I mentioned, the drug that has shown some degree of efficacy was modest, and it was in hospitalized patients, not yet, or maybe ever, to be used … as prophylaxis or treatment.”

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief was referring to remdesivir, a drug used by some patients already infected by the coronavirus. If a preventative vaccine is discovered, he added, “We hope to know that in the late fall [or] early winter,” but did not estimate how long it would take to become widely available.

“So if the issue is the young individuals who will be going back to school would like to have some comfort in that there is a treatment, the thing that would probably be closest to utilization then is passive transfer of convalescent serum,” Fauci said. “But we’re really not talking about necessarily treating a student who gets ill, but how the student will feel safe in going back to school.

“If this were a situation where we had a vaccine, that would really be the end of that issue in a positive way. But as I mentioned … even at the top speed we’re going, we don’t see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get back to school this term,” he added.

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