By Sara G. Miller and Jane Weaver - NBC News
While movie theaters, gyms and beauty salons continue to reopen across the country and some states already allow dining inside restaurants with limited capacity, daily life won't return to normal until late 2021, when a COVID-19 vaccine It can be distributed on a large scale, the leading expert on infectious diseases in the United States, Anthony Fauci, said on Friday.
During an interview on MSNBC, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said he is
confident that a vaccine will be available later this year or early 2021.
"But [getting] the distribution of the vaccine mobilized and a majority of the population protected is likely not to happen until the end of 2021," he said, "if we talk about returning to normality prior to COVID, it will be well entered in 2021, towards the end of 2021 ".
A group of young people visit a restaurant-bar in Miami Beach, Florida, where indoor dining was allowed again in late August.
Getty Images
Although the United States has reached stability within the high number of cases, with around
40,000 new infections and 1,000 deaths per day
, Fauci also expressed concern that states are starting to resume certain indoor activities such as dinner parties.
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"Being indoors absolutely increases the risk," he
warned, "I worry when I see the start of indoor activities, and that becomes more alarming as we enter the fall and winter season."
This week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said restaurants will reopen Sept. 30 at 25% capacity and rise to 50% in November.
Restaurants in Miami-Dade County, Florida, already reopened at 50% capacity at the end of August.
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Sept.
9, 202001: 41
A report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that adults who tested positive for COVID-19 were twice as likely to have dined at a restaurant in the past two weeks.
Fauci emphasized that the safest way to resume indoor activities is to reduce community transmission to the lowest possible level.
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He also noted that being outdoors doesn't guarantee complete protection either: "Just because you're outdoors doesn't mean you're protected, especially if you're in a crowd and you're not wearing a mask," he said, referring to political events.
Fauci did not provide further details on the Oxford University vaccine trial, which was put on hold by drugmaker AstraZeneca this week after a participant developed a spinal problem, but said the board of security is investigating the case.