Covid-19 vaccine 'unlikely' by October, NIH director says

The director of the National Institutes for Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said it’s “unlikely” that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready by October. 

“But I defend the CDC in their effort to try to be sure people are prepared,” Collins said in an interview with CNN.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told public health officials around the United States to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine as soon as late October. It’s also provided planning scenarios to help states prepare. 

“This is like the Boy Scout motto, ‘Be Prepared,’” Collins said. “Even if it’s very low likelihood, if everything happened to come together really beautifully and we had an answer by then and we knew we had a vaccine that was safe and effective, wouldn’t you want people to be ready to figure out how to do the distribution? That’s all that CDC is saying.”

“Now keep in mind that the likelihood of that is pretty low,” Collins added.

There are currently three vaccines in the US in phase 3 clinical trials.

source: cnn.com