Dr. Anothony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that COVID-19 turned out to be his "worst nightmare" and cautioned that the global pandemic "isn't over yet."
"In a period — if you just think about it — in a period of four months, it has devastated the world," Fauci said in an interview with the BIO Digital virtual health-care conference. "That's millions and millions of infections worldwide. And it isn't over yet. And it's condensed in a very, very small time frame."
There are more than 7.2 million confirmed cases around the world, and more than 400,000 people have died. In the United States, more than 2.2 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly 115,000 people died.
"It's a testimony to not only the extraordinary capability of transmission but of the extraordinary travel capability we have," he said. "I mean, it started in a very well-defined place in a city in China called Wuhan. And China is a big country. A lot of people travel all over the world. They travel to the United States. They travel to Europe."
Fauci said that while the pandemic isn't over, he is confident that the pharmaceutical industry will produce "more than one winner in the vaccine field because we will need vaccines for the entire world — billions and billions of doses."
"I'm very heartened by the fact that the industry has stepped to the plate — very much differently than what we saw with SARS," Fauci said. "The industry is not stupid — they figured it out. SARS had a degree of transmissibility that it burned itself out with pure public health measures. No way is that going to happen with this virus."
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