Fauci cautiously optimistic on COVID vaccine

The leading U.S. infectious disease expert says he is cautiously optimistic that a coronavirus vaccine with some degree of effectiveness will be successfully developed by the end of the year or the beginning of 2021.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told a U.N. event Wednesday that Moderna's vaccine will go into Phase 3 trials "sometime at the end of July and then others will follow in August, September and October."

He says Moderna's vaccine has shown "very promising" results, "which makes me cautiously optimistic, although you could never, ever predict with any certainty whether a vaccine is going to be safe and effective."

Fauci heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He says "a strategic approach" has been adopted to test multiple vaccine candidates using the same standards and measurements.