Dr. Fauci Says Getting America Vaccinated Will ‘Likely’ Take Until Mid or End 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci laid out a prospective timeline for a coronavirus vaccine, noting that although he thinks a treatment will be available by the end of this year, life might not be normal until the end of 2021.

“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy,” Fauci told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, adding that he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s prediction that we’re facing the end of the pandemic.

He added that he’s worried the U.S. is going to face a surge in cases following Labor Day weekend, similarly to how cases spiked after the Fourth of July.

“When you have a baseline of infections that are 40,000 per day and you have threats of increased test positivity in certain regions of the country such as the Dakotas, and Montana, places like that, what we don’t want to see is going into the fall season, when people will be spending more time indoors, and that’s not good for a respiratory-borne virus, you don’t want to start off already with a baseline that’ so high,” Fauci said of his concern going into the colder months.

Fauci later predicted that although the United States might have an available vaccine by the end of the year, the population will not get vaccinated until the middle or end of 2021.

“I believe that we will have a vaccine that will be available by the end of this year, the beginning of next year,” Fauci said. “But by the time you mobilize the distribution of the vaccinations, and you get the majority or more of the population vaccinated, and protected, that’s likely not going to happen until the mid or end of 2021.”

“If you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to Covid, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.