(Photo: Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
In a virtual Q&A with a Chicago nonprofit, Dr. Anthony Fauci talked about the new wave of COVID-19 cases in the country, and his optimism about a vaccine.
There are 40 states experiencing upticks in virus cases, and the country never got down to a manageable baseline amount of cases, Fauci, of the National Institutes of Health, said during the Chicago Ideas Week discussion.
“We’re in a very bad position when you think about where we’re going because the trajectory is going up. And then compound that with the holiday season coming … we have to do something different because we are clearly going in the wrong direction,” he said.
He said methods like contact tracing don’t work well because there’s so much community spreading, and all the precautions people are supposed to be taking aren’t uniformly done.
Fauci did predict a vaccine will be developed by the end of the year.
“By the time we get to the end of November, the beginning or middle of December, we should know whether we have a safe and effective vaccine. And at that point you can think about the distribution of doses towards the end of December, beginning of January,” he said.