On Friday during a three-hour hearing in front of Congress on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that it was a definitely a possibility the United States would have an effective vaccine against COVID-19 by early next year, according to a report by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP).
It was reported that Fauci’s optimism came on the same day Operation Warp Speed, the US's COVID-19 vaccine program, announced its biggest agreement yet: $2.1 billion to Sanofi Pasteur to supply the US government with 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine. Sanofi is working with GlaxoSmithKline on a vaccine clinical trial planned for September.
Fauci said he saw promising data on Moderna's vaccine, which began its phase 3 trials. Moderna's vaccine is also being funded in part by Operation Warp Speed, which has so far spent $8 billion on vaccine development.
And in answering questions about China and Russia's progress on a vaccine, Fauci seemed confident the US would not have to rely on an international vaccine candidate. "I do not believe that there will be vaccines so far ahead of us that we will have to depend on other countries to get us vaccines," he said.
Fauci was asked by James Clyburn, the Democratic Representative from South Carolina, why the US had more cases than Europe and if President Donald Trump's assertion that the high case counts in the country are simply because of more testing was true.
"When they [Europe] shut down, they shut down to the tune of about 95%, getting their baseline down to tens or hundreds of cases a day," Fauci said. "I stand by my previous statement that the increase in cases was due to a number of factors, one of which was that in the attempt to reopen, that in some situations, states did not abide strictly by the guidelines that the task force and the White House had put out and others that even did abide by it, the people in the state actually were congregating in crowds and not wearing masks."
According to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, as of today, the US has 4,688,395 COVID-19 cases and 154,860 fatalities. Global cases are 18,104,056.
The rising case counts have led to an erosion of American confidence concerning when and how to resume normal activities. According to a Jul 9 survey conducted by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, 44% said they would send their child back to school if restrictions were lifted, down from 48% in June. The percentage of Americans who said they would go to a concert dropped to 23% from 30% in June, and the percentage who said they would fly on an airplane dropped from 39% to 34%.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report a new account of high COVID-19 attack rates among campers at an overnight camp in Georgia. Though staff were masked and tested for the virus before welcoming campers onsite, campers were not masked and engaged in singing and cheering during the weeklong camp.
A total of 597 campers attended the camp, with a median age of 12. Staffers' median age was 17. COVID-19 test results were available for 344 (58%) attendees; among these, 260 (76%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the CDC said. The overall attack rate was 44% (260 of 597), 51% among those aged 6 to 10 years, 44% among those 11 to 17, and 33% among those 18 to 21.
"This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission," the authors concluded.
