The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that he doesn't discuss vaccine development with President Trump.
Fauci said that when the White House Task Force used to meet daily, he used to have meetings with Trump about four times a week.
However, the director added that as the task force meetings decreased lately, his meetings with the President dropped drastically.
The health expert said he wasn't satisfied with Moderna's press release on their vaccine data. “I didn’t like that,” he said.
Dr. Fauci said that it would have been better if Moderna didn't publish the data unless the Phase 1 was entirely complete, then publish it in a reputable journal and show the complete data. However, Dr. Fauci said that Moderna's release left him optimistic.
He also expressed his happiness regarding several other vaccines in development, including the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine, as well.
“What I like about the whole thing is that there are multiple candidates that we’re involved with. It just feels good to be directly or indirectly involved in four or five candidates,” he said.
As Fauci has said before, the timetable for having a vaccine by the end of the year is achievable.
