Kizzmekia Corbett, the National Institute of Health’s lead scientist for coronavirus vaccine research tells CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta that a vaccine for coronavirus could possibly be available to the general public by next spring.
Transcript:
Anderson Cooper: I know, I’m sure you get this question from anybody you meet who finds out what you do. Any idea when a vaccine, assuming that this vaccine works, when it might be available for use?
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett: Yeah, so, you know, we are targeting, I’m sorry, we’re targeting fall for the emergency use. So that would be a no for healthcare workers and people who might be in constant contact, in a risk of being exposed over and over. And then for the general population our target goal is for a next spring, and that is if all things go well and if these Phase 1 Phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials work simultaneously for the good, our plan is to have people vaccinated all over the world by next spring.
Anderson Cooper: So, let me just be clear, you’re saying for the fall it might be available or your hope is, your plan is if if it works out in his clinical trials, is have it available for emergency workers First Responders by the fall.
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett: You know and yeah and so all of these timelines, you know, I like to say the universe helps us to decide, right. So, we could be lucky and not even be under this level of stress um and in containment there might not be this level of exposure come fall, but if there is, there are mechanisms by which you can get a product approved for emergency use and in people who might be exposed constantly
Wow that’s really fascinating, um wow.Well, thank you for all you’re doing. I hope this works. Um yeah, I hope this works.
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett: We do too.
Anderson Cooper: Ah, Miss Corbett, thank you so much, Sanjay as well.
