Roundup: Top health official warns pandemic "could go on and on" if not enough people are vaccinated

Top health official warns pandemic "could go on and on" if not enough people are vaccinated Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, has warned that the pandemic could drag on if not enough people get vaccinated. By <a href="/profiles/jessie-yeung">Jessie Yeung</a>, Adam Renton, Emma Reynolds, Ed Upright, Melissa Macaya and <a href="/profiles/meg-wagner">Meg Wagner</a>, CNN CNN

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, has warned that the pandemic could drag on if not enough people get vaccinated.

Some 70-80% of the public needs to be immune before the virus “basically gives up and it will be gone,” Collins told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday. “We think we can get there by June or so for almost all of the 330 million Americans who are interested in getting this vaccine."

“But if only half of them do so, this could go on and on and on,” he said. 

On vaccine safety: Collins pointed to the way that the vaccines were designed, tested in trials, the careful analysis by objective scientists and then going before the US Food and Drug Administration and public review, as points of confidence for the vaccine.