The head of a public–private partnership to respond to the coronavirus is hopeful that it will have enough vaccine doses for “everybody” by summer 2021.
Moncef Slaoui, who is chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, told ABC News that although it is “not a certainty” that the initiative will have vaccine doses for all citizens of the United States by next summer, he is optimistic that people will voluntarily take them to slow the spread of the virus.
“It’s a plan, it’s not a certainty,” Slaoui told ABC News’s Bob Woodruff. “But the plan should make it such that by June, everybody could have been immunized in the United States. We will have enough vaccine doses. I really hope most people will take the vaccines.”
Slaoui said that stalled phase three vaccination trials by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson had been taken into consideration for the vaccination timeline.
“The No. 1 priority is safety, of course,” Slaoui said, adding that he expects the trials to restart as early as next week. “If that means the trial has to stop for a month … that’s what we’ll do.”
More than 8 million people in the U.S. have contracted the coronavirus, and more than 220,000 people have died from COVID-19 complications.
