(NEW YORK POST) – Several vaccines will likely be needed to combat the coronavirus and provide immunity to the diverse population in the US and around the world, the National Institutes of Health director said.
Dr. Francis Collins, who began leading the NIH in 2009, said that he anticipates that several effective candidates will come out of the race to defeat the pandemic, Bloomberg reported.
“My expectation is, and I am a bit of an optimist, that we don’t find out that there’s only one of these vaccines that works, but rather two or three of them come through the trials looking as though they’re safe and effective,” Collins said.
“They’ll have somewhat different characteristics of where they work best, so we might need to do some matching then of which vaccine goes to which particular population.”
Collins’ remarks come as Dr. Anthony Fauci said he believes the US may have a successful COVID-19 vaccine as early as late fall.
“There are at least eight candidate COVID-19 vaccines in clinical development. The [National Institute of Health] has been collaborating with a number of pharmaceutical companies at various stages of development,” said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases.
More than 4.2 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US accounts for almost a third of the global infections, with more than 1.3 million confirmed cases.
