Read Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Testimony
In a statement to the Senate, Fauci gave an update on vaccines and drugs for Covid-19
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Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institutes of Health and an expert on Trump’s coronavirus task force, is testifying before a Senate committee on the administration’s coronavirus response. In his introductory statement, Fauci said there are many possible vaccines being worked on and that researchers hope to develop more than one.
Read his full statement below.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss with you today, the role the National Institutes of Health in research addressing Covid-19. The strategic plan that we have is four-fold. One, to improve a fundamental knowledge of the virus and the disease it causes. Next, to develop new point of care diagnostics. Next, to characterize and test therapeutics. And finally, to develop safe and effective vaccines.
First with regard to diagnostics. As you probably heard from Dr. Francis Collins last Thursday, the NIH has developed their Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics program called RADx, with an award to that specific program, up to a half a billion dollars to support the development of Covid-19 diagnostics. It is a national call for innovative technologies that will be evaluated in a shark tank-like selection process to get to either success or failure rapidly.
Moving on to therapeutics. I’ll talk a bit about the remdesivir success antiviral in a moment, but let me emphasize that there are a number of broad spectrum antivirals that are in various stages of testing. In addition, we will be looking at convalescent plasma, which is plasma from individuals who’ve recovered from Covid-19, to be used in passive transfer, either in prevention or treatment. In addition, hyperimmune globulin, which could be used as a gamma globulin shot. We’ll be looking at repurpose drugs as well as immune-based therapies and host modifiers, and finally monoclonal antibodies.
Let me take a moment to describe the remdesivir placebo-controlled, randomized trial, which was done internationally with the power of more than a thousand individuals and sites throughout the world. It was in hospitalized patients with lung disease. The end point…
