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Dr. Fauci Speaks About COVID-19 Spread And Vaccine During Aspen Ideas Festival

ASPEN, Colo. (CBS4) -- The Aspen Ideas Festival kicked off virtually weekend with conversations about the latest COVID-19 developments. Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke to the Aspen Institute about how young people are spreading the virus -- and about the timeline for a vaccine.

anthony fauci
(credit: Aspen Ideas Festival)

"[Young people] don't realize that while they're getting infected they're likely to infect someone else who ultimately will infect a vulnerable person, and then you have hospitalizations or deaths," Fauci said. "So like it or not, by getting infected yourself you're not in a vacuum, you're part of the propagation of the dynamics of a pandemic, so you have to have your own individual responsibility to protect yourself but you really do have a societal responsibility to not be part of the problem but to be part of the solution."

Fauci said they are spreading the disease in "an innocent, understandable but regrettable way."

As for a vaccine, Fauci said there could be one by the end of the year.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that we will have one or maybe more candidates of vaccines that could be available and be effective by the end of the year, the beginning of 2021," Fauci stated.

Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the US National Institutes of Health, where he oversees an extensive research portfolio on infectious and immune-mediated diseases. A member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, he is one of the key advisors to the White House and to the US Department of Health and Human Services on global HIV/AIDS issues and on public health preparedness initiatives against emerging infectious disease threats.

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