The United States could be back to normal by next summer or early fall if everyone gets a Covid-19 vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted Thursday.
"It depends how quickly and how many people want to get vaccinated," Fauci told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
"If we have a smooth vaccination program where everybody steps to the plate quickly, we could get back to some form of normality reasonably quickly into the summer and certainly into the fall."
The US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted to recommend emergency-use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine Thursday. The FDA is expected to approve an EUA for the vaccine in the next couple of days.
"My hope and my projection is that if we get people vaccinated en masse so that we get that large percentage of the population, as we get into the fall, we can get real comfort about people being in schools, safe in school," Fauci said.
"That's what I hope and project we would do if we get everybody vaccinated."