Dr. Fauci says the timeline on when the general public will be able to get a vaccine slips at least a month.

Primary tabs

Tue, 2021-02-16 16:56 — mike kraft

Dr. Fauci shifts the timeline on when the general public will be able to get a vaccine Dr. Anthony Fauci said vaccines will be available to the general public by about mid to late May or early June, he told CNN's Jim Sciutto on Tuesday. Christina Maxouris, Eric Levenson and Naomi Thomas, CNN CNN

(CNN)Dr. Anthony Fauci said vaccines won't be available to the "general public" before mid- to late May or early June, he told CNN's Jim Sciutto on Tuesday.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged that previous estimates had placed vaccine availability for the general public -- or nonessential workers under 65 with no health conditions -- closer to the end of April.

"If you start talking about when the 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 have fewer than 10 million vaccine doses available if the US Food and Drug Administration authorizes it for emergency use in the coming weeks, a federal health official told CNN earlier this month.

"So, that timeline will probably be prolonged, maybe into mid- to late May and early June, that's fine," Fauci said.

He downplayed the shifted expectations and noted that there will be several months between when vaccinations are generally available and when each person will individually be able to access one.

"You can say, let's say in May, vaccines are going to be widely available to almost anybody May, June, but it may take to June, July and August to finally get everyone vaccinated," he said. "So when you hear about how long it's going to take to get the overwhelming population vaccinated, I don't think anybody disagrees that that's going to be well to the end of the summer and we get in the early fall."

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden's administration is again increasing its weekly Covid-19 vaccine supply being sent to states, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday.

During a call with governors, White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients informed the officials that the administration is "increasing the vaccine supply to 13.5 million doses per week to states," Psaki said at Tuesday's briefing, a 57% increase from inauguration levels. ...

ALSO SEE: Moderna says U.S. supply of its vaccine doses have lagged recently

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags: