Dr. Fauci Is Optimistic That a Coronavirus Vaccine Could be Available by January 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci is optimistic that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) might be ready for use by January 2021.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, told Savannah Guthrie on the Today show Thursday that the government is working to ensure a possible vaccine is effective before manufacturing it worldwide.

"We want to go quickly but we want to make sure it's safe and effective," he said, adding that having a vaccine by January 2021, "is doable if things fall in the right place."

Fauci, 79, explained to Guthrie that a team is in "early phases of a trial, phase one" of developing a COVID-19 vaccine.

"When you go into the next phase, we're gonna  — safely and carefully, but as quickly as we possibly can — try and get an answer as to whether it works and it's safe," he said. "If so, we are going to start ramping up production with the companies involved."

"You do that at risk, in other words you don't wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing," Fauci explained. "You, at risk, proactively start making it, assuming it's going to work. If it does, then you can scale up and hopefully get to that timeline."

However, Fauci emphasized to Guthrie that while remdesivir helps in COVID-19 recovery, it is not a complete cure for the virus.

"Although the results were clearly positive from a statistically significant standpoint, they were modest,'' he said. "The improvement was a 31% better chance of recovering and getting out of the hospital. That's important, but it's the first step in what we project will be better and better drugs coming along."

"So it's good news, but I was very serious when I said this is not the total answer by any means," he added. "But it's a very important first step."

As of Thursday afternoon, there are over 3 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the world — 1 million of which are in the United States alone — while at least 227,600 people have died from the virus globally, according to the Johns Hopkins database.

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments. To help provide doctors and nurses on the front lines with life-saving medical resources, donate to Direct Relief here.

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