Dr. Fauci Weighs in On Pfizer Vaccine Breakthrough, Says News Could Bode Well for Others in Development

White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough could result in other vaccine candidates also being successful.

After it was reported this week that Pfizer’s vaccine “was 90% effective in protecting people from transmission of the virus in global trials,” Fauci told CNN, “This shows that the mRNA platform actually does work. And there’s another vaccine candidate, Moderna, that’s using the same platform.”

“An answer depends on the size of the trial and how many infections there are in the community,” he continued, noting, “This was a trial that was geared to 44,000 people and we are in the middle of a major surge right now. Those two things together make it much more likely that you’ll get an answer quickly, which is what happened. We got an answer quickly.”

Before the Pfizer news dropped, Fauci had told the American Medical Association on Saturday, “As we get into November and then maybe into December, we will get an answer as to whether one or more of these candidates are safe and effective. I am cautiously optimistic.”

Fauci, however, questioned, “How effective would the vaccine be and, as importantly, how many individuals will opt to take the vaccine?” before adding, “But if we get a reasonably effective vaccine of 70% to 75% and a substantial proportion of the population takes the vaccine, I think we will be going in the right direction of some degree of normality as we head into 2021 in the second, third and fourth quarter.”

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