her book speaking for myself, faith, freedom and the fight for our lives inside the trump white house, interviewed by bloomberg news, jennifer jacobs, watch booktv on c-span2 this weekend. doctor anthony fauci says it is unlikely there will be a coronavirus vaccine by election day but he remains optimistic about one being ready by the end of the year. he spoke with judy woodruff about public trust in a vaccine, how it would be distributed and other issues related to the pandemic. >> thank you for having me and i am going to plunge right in. i don't see you yet on the screen but i know you're there. >> i'm here, good to be with you. >> let's start with the basics. where are we as a country in

the battle against covid-19? if you were asked for status reports what would you say? >> a mixed bag. if you look at the numbers, very serious and concerning. we have had 185,000 deaths, 6 million infections. if you look at the country, a large country, there are some areas doing really well right now particularly those early on, in the metropolitan area, at least a month been less than one% test positivity. in other parts of the country, what we saw in the southern states with a big surge when they try to open the economy that brought a baseline number of daily infections up from

20,000 a day to 70,000, we are back between 30-40,000 and as though states are starting to level off and come down which is really good sign we are seeing the beginning of surges in places like montana, the dakotas, michigan, minnesota, iowa. it is a mixed bag. some areas are doing really well and some are still threatening to have surges. it is not an easy situation. >> if someone say we are rounding the final curve on this what would you say? >> if you pick the location of the country and say it could be true but if you look at the country as a whole we need to be doing much better than we are doing, that is for sure. >> this month as you know, on the mind of so many families,

students returning to school. people are worried about their children. i want to start by asking about colleges. there has been a lot of focus on those. they do not test positive, what are you concerned about? why did you make that recommendation? >> when you bring in college students in if they get infected, the facility to see questions from the rest of the student body. you shouldn't send them home, if you send them home, the nature of universities, you get kids from all over the country, send them back to the community, to be receding with individuals capable of transmitting infections. many communities throughout the

country, much better to have the capability to put them in a place they could comfortably recover, as some colleges are doing, dedicated to people to segregate from the rest of the student body. >> how are american colleges and universities handling it? >> in different ways. some are going virtual, and online completely but several that i had the opportunity to speak with are doing testing on everybody that comes into the campus to start off with a baseline that is essentially 0 and the surveillance testing at various intervals. the capability of handling students who get infected seem to be successfully being able

to open. some colleges have the capability of being able to see that, much more to doing virtual or online teaching. >> what about in public schools, k-12. what is your concern, what should parents, how worried should parents be? >> in contrast to what i just mentioned regarding colleges and universities, young people are coming in from all different parts of the country. when you're dealing with k-12, it is a local issue. being a local issue what i and others have said, in this country we had green, yellow and red zones, there is very little infection activity. in those cases you can open the schools in person-to-person teaching with relative impunity

as long as you are able to identify students who get infected and make appropriate accommodations to them. when you get into the yellow zone and have a degree of infection in the community you've got to be able to adjust and adapt to that, be prepared. look at the cdc guidelines you might want to modify your schedule morning versus afternoon, separating of the desk, physically you can do that. in the red zone, you will never be careful before you bring children back, you don't create a situation with a hyper spreading event like you had in the school. >> let's turn to the big question, vaccine. there is a lot of speculation about when we will have a safe and effective vaccine available to everyone who needs it. what do you know about it right now? >> there are 6 or 7 candidates

the us government is helping to facilitate by developing with them or purchasing of doses, the network to be available. three of those candidates are in phase 3 trial which means you are going to enroll tens of thousands of volunteers to determine if it is safe and effective. the same trials that god started on july 2, '07, if they try to boost the dose, 28 pages, then you give a boost. right now the trials are about 2 thirds enrolled. we project by the end of september they will be fully enrolled and another month, to a month and a half, that is the reason -- by the end of the year by november, december we

will know whether we have a safe and effective vaccine. i feel cautiously optimistic that we will given the pulmonary data we have seen and there are a couple of other vaccines that will go into phase 3 trial at the end of september and october. sequentially the candidates in play which is the reason we are optimistic we will be successful with one or more by the end of the calendar year, 2020. >> the idea we will have a vaccine by november 3rd, how realistic? >> i think it is unlikely. the only way you could see that scenario come true is there are so many infections in the clinical trial sites that you get an efficacy answer sooner than we would have projected. like i said it is not

impossible but it is unlikely we will have a definitive answer at that time. more likely by the end of the year. >> we now with regard to the public confidence in the vaccine, anthony fauci, polls are showing perhaps a third of americans are not confident enough and saying they are not going to take the vaccine at first. that is a pretty high percentage. at what point does this become a problem? >> i think it already is a looming problem and one of the ways we can mitigate against that is by being very transparent in our outreach to the community, what they show and what criteria we are using in order to make a decision about the vaccine being safe and effective and making it available. we got to regain the trust of the community, when we say

something is safe and effective, something that is safe and effective and that is the reason we have to be very transparent with the data as well as what goes into the decision-making process about approving a vaccine. >> to be transparent. >> one of the things we need to do better on, the higher percentage of minorities in the clinical trial so that when we get the data we can say that it applies equally to the minority community, african-american, latino, native american and others because we want to make sure when we say something is safe and effective we mean it is safe and effective for everyone, that we need to do a little better on. >> from the fall, on the onset

of flu season, you and others raised concerns about the convergence of the flu and covid-19. in the southern hemisphere somewhat milder flu outbreaks then there might have been. does that give you more hope for the fall here or not? >> it does. i never take anything for granted. that is dangerous when you are dealing with public health. one of the things we can say is we should continue to encourage people to get vaccinated with the influenza vaccine. of what happened in the southern hemisphere happens here, that would be a very good and favorable thing. what we think has happened, we think because people have done public health measures to avoid infection with the coronavirus namely masks, distancing, avoiding crowds, washing hands, we had a secondary effect that

there are less influenza infections. on australia this year, there influenza season which goes from april to september they had one of the lowest rates of influenza infection in memory. if we can do that, that would be very favorable. >> what do you know about the coexistence if that is the right word of flu and covid-19 that is a concern? what is it about being exposed to the two? >> it is the wintertime between you have winter and indoors, you can expect an uptick of any type of respiratory illness. if we have a full-blown flu season which i hope we don't and we do not get control over the coronavirus you could have several challenges.

one is differentiating between covid-19 and flu because they are -- there are medications for flu and we are getting more medications for covid-19. number 2, we wouldn't want to see an overwhelming of the healthcare delivery system, hospital beds, intensive care unit beds and even healthcare personnel. that would be a very serious issue if we begin to see any overwhelming of that and that is the reason when you have two coexisting infections during the winter months it becomes problematic. >> do you know how effective the flu vaccine will be this year or do you just have to watch that play out? >> you have to watch that play out, you don't know from year-to-year how effective it is going to be.

>> is there a sufficient fly -- supply of the flu vaccine? there's been so much on covid-19. >> we have been vaccinating more and more people with the influenza vaccine as the years go by. last year was something like 170 million doses were distributed. we want to do at least that amount and hopefully more this year. >> you have concern about the public's reluctance to have the flu vaccine because of covid-19 out there and they are worry, apprehension about any vaccine. >> obviously that is something that bothers me continually, the people who have reluctance to get vaccinated particularly when you know a vaccine would be of such considerable benefit. we have to fight the classic anti-vaccine group and if there is doubting anybody's mind about the efficacy or safety

which is what we are seeing with covid-19, you've got to do an extra special effort to engage the community and outreach to them to get them the data they can make an informed decision. >> you mentioned a moment ago, anthony fauci, you want to make sure minority racial minorities are addressed, whether it is the manufacturer, distribution of the covid-19 vaccine, how do you do that? how do you make sure this is distributed equitably? >> it is all community outreach. we have done that back in the day with hiv, prevention and treatment measures, you've got to engage the community, getting the appropriate demographic groups involved in the clinical trial so you prove it is safe and effective and once you do that you engage the

community in an active way, getting into the community yourself, getting them involved. it is not an easy process but it is worthwhile. >> are there strategies in place to do that? >> absolutely. we've been planning for this for a few months. >> that is underway. i want to ask, this is research america, the effect covid-19 has had on other health risks and on our research infrastructure in this country. >> it has been disrupted across the board not only in the united states but globally because of the shutdowns and the divergent and attention away from other diseases and covid-19. the typical type of screening,

2 things to pay attention to, screening for pressed cancer, following up on things that were suggestive of an issue but you asked to follow up and delayed by months, you wind up getting to a situation where diseases that have nothing to do with covid-19, diseases of different types, infections, autoimmune, inflammatory, routine checkups you would need tend to get neglected. we know the disruption of services and the disruption of availability and drugs can really be a problem. bottom line is it is quite disruptive and have deleterious effects. >> is there evidence that has happened?

>> absolutely. you are seeing upticks in things you would not have had if you had the appropriate screening and appropriate follow-up. >> how important is it, self answering questions, there's been a hold up in congressional funding on what we are talking about, how important that funding continue. >> being a health, science-based institution has been treated with considerable degree of generosity by the congress. ..d. ms. woodruff: you are not involved -- maybe you are, in lobbying for funds. but, is it your sense that funding is going to be forthcoming, that is necessary to bolster the research? dr. fauci: yes. we have gotten a considerable amount already. >> yes. we have gotten a considerable

amount already. we have not been disappointed every time that we've asked, and they ask us what it is we actually need. we give them an honest assessment of our needs and thus far they have been met. >> dr. fauci, people talk about pandemic fatigue, if you will. we have been at this, the country been at this now for more than six months. how do you ensure that the american people stay vigilant, stay mindful of this? the numbers are mindnumbing. we are at 190,000 americans dead. we are at as you know millions have been infected. the numbers just keep coming at us. people are still gathering, sometimes wearing masks, sometimes not. how do you keep people vigil? vigilant? >> you have got to keep reminding them of the importance of being vigilant. it is clearly a risk when you

have been exhaustively involved in something now for eight months. one of the things that i do, and i believe it can be effective, is to be my people that there end to this. we will end this crisis that we're in right now, both from a public health standpoint and from a scientific standpoint. for example, with vaccines and treatments. when people know there is an end in sight, they can hang on a bit longer. it's when they throw their hands up in exasperation and say this is never going to income so the heck with it. why don't we just get on with our lives and do what we want to do? that can be very dangerous conclusion to arrive at. because it leads to carelessness and even more infections and the propagation oft the pandemic. but when people see if they just hang in there a little bit more,

we will come to a natural end to this. that's what i tryme to emphasize the people when i speak. >> what do you worry that most about at this point? is it the vaccine? is it something else? >> i don't worry about' it but i'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get a vaccine. i think we will not really return with ease to a degree of normality that we all seek until we do get a safe and effective vaccine. and as i mentioned, i believe we willit have that by the end of this year, the beginning of the next calendar year 2021. let's hope i am correct and it will be available, at a think that will really be a game changer for us. >> i'm looking at a couple of obvious questions come dr. fauci. one of them is if there's a choice of vaccines for people to have access to come out and i don't know, that possible that

there will be several vaccines? available to people? will people be up to make a a decision about which one to choose? >> i think it is t eminently possible, if not likely that we love more than one candidate. i can mention there are six or seven that we ourselves in the united states are directly or indirectly involved with. that's not even counting the vaccines that are being made by foreign countries like russia and china in the uk and others. i would be surprised if we only had one vaccine. i think there would be more than one that would be available. >> so how do people make the decision about which one is the right one for them? >> well, you know, the companies are going to bene advertising as to what the specifics and the specifications of the product. i think it's going to be more or less, judy, something less sophisticated than this one happens to be available in the supply place where you're getting your vaccine, as opposed

to you pick the one you want. it may be, if a certain pharmacy chain buys out and they become the ones that distributed come fine. or if there's another mechanism of distribution ethic that the government were deeply involved with, then that's the one you're going to get. i don't think you will be able to pick and choose like you would in the candy store. >> coming back to question and those you been asked a lot but political influence, rushing a vaccine, how can you reassure americans that there will not be a political thumb on the scale? >> because there are several issues that i think will mitigate against that. the data as they come and go to an independent data and safety monitoring board who thenrd make the recommendations as to whether or not the vaccine is effective or not, whether it is harmful or not. and then when that dave is available it would ultimately become public.

the fda has publicly promised that they would not allow political consideration to get involved in their decision. and in addition when they do make a decision they get input from outsidero advisory group wo will be involved in looking at the data and making recommendations about a decision so that would be a couple of levels of control of that decision. >> you mentioned the fda, dr. fauci, and i know we'll have a fewte minutes left but it was the fda that rolled out original information about the so-called convalescent plasma where they came back and later it'd been overstated.. when you have something like that happen, is an natural that people may be skeptical? >> you are right, judy. i don't wantre to deny that. that's reality, what we're trying to do now is correct that and get them to understand there will be multiple layers of

checkpoints before this type of decision is made. there are a lot of people looking at this, a lot of people in the scientific community, myself included, were looking at this to try to make sure it gets done in a way that is scientifically sound. >> and i should sit not just the fda but there have been some back-and-forth if you will at the cdc where there's been guidance and it has been pulled back and questions raised. i have to ask again how can the american people be sure they getting straight science from these government agencies? >> again, it's not going to be easy given what's going on before. we just have to keep being quite transparent. ing have been right from the beginning always quite clear in how i feel about the importance of the integrity of the science and the integrity of the decision-making process. and i and many of my site to the

colleagues will continue to be very vigilant about that. >> -- my science. >> i mention convalescent plasma at and original recommendation from the fda. it wask reported in the "new yok times" that nih did not support that recommendation. can you shed any light on what happened inside the administration, government? >> we looked at the data and it was really veryy clear-cut whether or not this was effective. but the rules for eua are really quite loose in the sense of being able to say that has to be a chance of efficacy. there was a bit of a discussion back and forth about how tight those date data were to indicae that. at the end of the day when the randomized placebo-controlled trials come up with results we are going to do with the right answer is. >> and finally, dr. fauci, we have just a couple of minutes. when we think about americans

are going to most need a vaccine, clearly front-linee workers, people with compromised immune systems, perhaps the elderly, how do you think about that, and is that all decided right now about what groups of americans need to get the vaccine first? >> that is decided by an advisory committee on immunization practices which reports to the cdc. ultimately the cdc is involved in the final responsibility of distribution. this year the national academy of medicine, whose recommendation came up literally a day or two ago, is called in to complement that decision-making process. and as you said i think you called it correctly, it's not unexpected that front-line workers, healthcare workers are those who get a first come those with essential jobs, those who

would benefit most, namely those with underlying conditions including the elderly. it looks like it's going to play up that way with the covid vaccine. >> any final message you want to give to this community? >> judy, it is, it's what i said before, to really essentially get people through the frustration of having been in business for so many months, that we need to hang in there together. this will end and it will end even sooner if we continue to go by the public health measures that have been recommended time and again for so many months. >> dr. fauci, thank you so much. i'm going to turn the program back over to derek. thank you. >> thank you, judy. good to be with you as y always. >> thank you. this morning we had a a survey where people were asked what's the most important thing that will lead to success in the

advancement of science and trust insights was what far away came through as the most selective answer, and the two of you with your work today and throughout the last several months and, of course, many years for you, dr. fauci, are doing just that so thank you very, very much. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> here's a a look at our live coverage wednesday.

>> there are several events streaming live wednesday on our website. at 1:15 p.m. eastern our campaign 2020 coverage continues with former vice president joe biden speaking in war in michigan. at 3 p.m. vice president pence attends and workers for trump event in freedom pennsylvania. at 3:15 p.m. the senate veterans affairs to withhold a hearing on suicide prevention and providing mental health care for veterans. that is all live at c-span.org. >> booktv on c-span2 has top nonfiction books and authors have your weekend. coming up week and saturday at 8:40 p.m. eastern carter carter page former policy advisor for president trump's 2016 presidential campaign on his book abuse and power how an

innocent american was framed in an attempted coup against the president. sunday at 7:40 p.m. eastern cnn worldwide chief media correspondent brian stelter with his book hoechst, donald trump, fox news and the dangers distortion of truth. at 9 p.m. on "after words" sarah huckabee sanders former white house press secretary for president trump on her book speaking for myself, eighth, coe freedom and a fight for our lives inside the trump white house. she is any good by bloomberg news white house reporter jennifer jacobs. watch booktv on c-span2 this weekend. >> next, a discussion on the role u.s. foreign policy place in a voter selection of the next president. the atlantic council hosted this virtual discussion looking at the coronavirus pandemic response, the bill is peace deal