Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, told the Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday that a COVID-19 vaccine might be available in the U.S. as early as January.
Fauci said the five companies that are working on vaccines probably won’t be ready with their data until December. At least two of those five companies would then need to apply for an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to move forward with the vaccine.
“Could be January, could be later,” Fauci said of the vaccine’s timeline. “We don’t know.”
Fauci warned that the country is seeing a spike in cases as the cold weather approaches.
“As we continue into the cool months of the fall and soon the cold months of the winter we’re starting to see something going in the wrong direction,” he said. “We should have been way down in baseline in daily cases and we’re not.”
The U.S. has seen more than 226,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to John Hopkins University.
bossa nova