Hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin touted a Russian-made COVID-19 vaccine; Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed his doubts over the safety and efficiency of the new vaccine that appears to have been speedily developed to prove the Russian scientific superiority as the first country to obtain the long-awaited vaccine.
“Having a vaccine and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective ate two different things,” Fauci said in a virtual discussion with National Geographic. “If we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people, or giving them something that doesn’t work, we could start doing this next week if we wanted to. But that’s not the way it works.”
The expert urged Americans to understand that when China or Russia makes such announcements, they are not necessarily following American standards: “We have a way of doing things in this country that we care about safety.”
