Dr. Anthony Fauci says he expects coronavirus vaccines for young children to be ready by the end of the year.
"As we get into the next several months because these types of studies are going on, and I would hope that as we get towards the end of this calendar year, that children of any age will be able to be vaccinated,'' the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said during an appearance on SiriusXM’s ''The Joe Madison Show'' set to be released Friday.
''But you don't want to do that until you get sufficient data to feel comfortable about it. But we have every reason to believe, given the extraordinary track record of these vaccines, that we will be able to vaccinate children of any age before we get to the end of the year."
More than half of adults in the U.S. have been inoculated with at least one dose of the vaccine. Herd immunity may not be reached, though, as daily vaccination rates are slipping.
"We should never feel comfortable about this until we have actually crushed this outbreak,'' said Fauci. ''We are going very much in the right direction ... we can't be complacent about this until we've essentially gotten the level of infection dramatically lower than it is now. Even though it's going in the right direction, we don't want to declare victory prematurely."
Fauci also said he trusted Chinese scientists to be forthcoming about the lab in Wuhan, where some believe the coronavirus originated.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered the U.S. intelligence community to investigate the origins of the virus and said some intelligence agencies believe it was most likely created naturally. At least one agency favored the theory that it leaked accidentally from the Wuhan lab.
"Yeah, I think you have to have a difference between the scientists in China and the Chinese government,'' Fauci said.
''I don't have much insight into the latter. We've worked with Chinese scientists for decades and decades in a collaborative manner, with influenza, with bird flu, with a variety of other diseases. And our experience with the scientists have been that they have been of good faith. They're talented; many of them have made major accomplishments in science and that's the reason why we've worked with them."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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