Dr. Anthony Fauci Appeals to Black Community: ‘The Vaccine That You’re Going to Be Taking Was Developed by an African American Woman’

By Anne Branigin, TheRoot.com

With skepticism about the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine running high among African Americans, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, wants Black people to know that a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, was heavily involved in developing one of the vaccines that will soon be available to Americans later this month.

Fauci, speaking at a National Urban League event on Tuesday, acknowledged the history behind African American distrust of medical research and the American health care system, reports CNN. But the epidemiologist also emphasized that the two forthcoming coronavirus vaccines are both safe and effective, drawing attention to Dr. Corbett’s involvement in the process.

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, left, senior research fellow and scientific lead for coronavirus vaccines and immunopathogenesis team in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, talks with President Donald Trump (not pictured) as he tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
Photo: Evan Vucci (AP)

“The very vaccine that’s one of the two that has absolutely exquisite levels—94 to 95 percent efficacy against clinical disease and almost 100 percent efficacy against serious disease that are shown to be clearly safe—that vaccine was actually developed in my institute’s vaccine research center by a team of scientists led by Dr. Barney Graham and his close colleague, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, or Kizzy Corbett,” Fauci said.

“So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman,” he continued. “And that is just a fact.”

The vaccine Fauci is referring to is the one that will be released by Moderna, one of two vaccines that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to give emergency use authorization to (the other will be distributed by Pfizer). Dr. Corbett, the lead scientist for the National Institute of Health’s coronavirus vaccine research, has spoken out about institutional distrust in the Black community in the past, saying she’s seen the hesitancy to take vaccines first-hand.

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Learn more about the history of injustices against Black people in society and the medical field here, here, and here.

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