Coronavirus updates: US should have 100 million doses of vaccine by end of year, Fauci says

SHARE NOW

Ovidiu Dugulan/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ABC News(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 380,000 people worldwide.Over 6.3 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks.Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 1.8 million diagnosed cases and at least 106,181 deaths. Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:

5:23 a.m.: UN reports first coronavirus death of Rohingya refugeeA Rohingya refugee who contracted the novel coronavirus in the world’s largest refugee camp has died, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.It’s the first known coronavirus-related death of a Rohingya refugee.The UNHCR said the refugee, who was not named, tested positive for COVID-19 in one of the densely-packed camps near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The sprawling camps and surrounding makeshift settlements are home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees who fled ethnic violence and persecution in neighboring Myanmar, where they are a stateless Muslim minority group.The first known COVID-19 cases in the camps were confirmed last month. One was a Rohingya refugee and the other was a Bangladeshi citizen.Bangladesh currently has more than 52,000 diagnosed cases of the disease with at least 746 deaths, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

3:45 a.m.: US should have 100 million doses of vaccine by end of year, Fauci saysThe United States should have 100 million doses of one potential vaccine for COVID-19 by the end of the year, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic.”We’re going to start manufacturing doses of the vaccines way before we even know that the vaccine works, so that by the end of the year the prediction of the statistical analysis and the projection of cases indicate that we may know whether its effective, efficacious or not by maybe November, December, which means that by that time we hopefully would have close to a 100 million doses,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Tuesday during a live video interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.”And by the beginning of 2021, we hope to have a couple of hundred million doses,” he added. “So it isn’t as if we’re going to make the vaccine show its effective and then have to wait a year to rev up to millions and millions of doses. Thats going to be done as we’re testing the vaccine.”A number of clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccine candidates are well underway around the world.The third and final phase of trials testing an experimental vaccine developed by Massachusetts-based biotech firm Moderna will begin in July. A few other vaccine candidates, including one developed by U.K.-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, are also showing promise, according to Fauci.Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.