The general public will likely have to wait a little longer before the novel coronavirus vaccine is available, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, speaking on CNN Tuesday, said the time frame for vaccinating those not in a priority group has been moved back by a month or two.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and an adviser to President Joe Biden, had said that he expected that by the end of April the vaccination would be available to anyone who wants one.
“If you start talking about when vaccine would be more widely available to the general population, I was hoping that that would be by the end of April, namely, have gone through all the priorities and now say, OK anyone can get it,” Fauci said. “That was predicated on J&J, the Johnson product, having considerably more doses than now we know they’re going to have.”
Johnson & Johnson will initially have fewer than 10 million vaccine doses available if they receive an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to CNN, which reported that a federal health official provided that estimate.
Johnson & Johnson petitioned the FDA on Feb. 4 for authorization for the use of the vaccine.
Fauci said he believed that by the end of June, production would be ramped up enough so that there would be plenty of vaccines available to Americans.
Biden echoed Fauci’s prediction during a town hall meeting Tuesday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was moderating the town hall, asked him when every American who wanted a vaccine was “going to be able to get a vaccine?”
“By the end of July this year,” Biden said. He then qualified his answer by saying that did not mean that anyone who wanted the vaccine would be vaccinated by the end of July, but that there would be enough doses to vaccinate anyone who wanted a vaccination.
Biden talked about the need to enlist more “vaccinators,” or people to administer the vaccine.
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Cox Media Group
