An effective Covid-19 vaccine combined with public health measures can help bring normalcy by next year according to Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the United States (US) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci, in a recent interview, said that a Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t have to be a 100 per cent effective to work. When asked about when the pandemic will end, Fauci said that things are likely to go back to normal by 2021 with the vaccine contrary to 2024 as predicted by few.

“I do not think it is going to be 2024. I think it's going to be more like the end of 2021,” Fauci said in the interview.

“If you synergise and superimpose good, solid, careful, prudent public health measures with a vaccine that is effective — it doesn't have to be 100 per cent effective,” he said.

“If you get a vaccine into 2021, throughout the year, I believe, by the year 2021, the end of the year, we will be as good back to normal as we possibly can,” he added.

Last month, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration had said that the agency would permit a coronavirus vaccine if it is 50 per cent effective according to a CNBC report.

He further emphasised that an effective vaccine doesn’t mean that we will eradicate the virus adding that the only virus ever eradicated is smallpox for humans.

Earlier this week, in a live-streamed Q&A hosted by Brown University, the infectious diseases expert had said that

the effectiveness of the vaccine in creating an immune response against the virus is likely to be 70-75 per cent adding that the measles vaccine which is the most effective of all, provides 97 per cent immunity.

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