Fauci says he's getting his COVID-19 vaccine 'in the next few days'

• Dr. Anthony Fauci told "Today" host Savannah Guthrie he expects to get his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in the next few days and that he's "ready" to be vaccinated.
• The FDA is set to authorize Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine today, which would make it the second vaccine in the US.
• Fauci said it's important to continue with social distancing and face-mask wearing even with the news of a vaccine.

After months of heading the United States' coronavirus response plan, Dr. Anthony Fauci is expecting to receive his first dose of the two-shot COVID-19 vaccine "within the next few days."

"We're waiting for the supply to come in to the NIH. We haven't got our supply yet," Fauci said during an interview with Savannah Guthrie on "Today." "I hope it's going to come in the next couple of days. If it does, I'm going to get vaccinated as soon as I can. I hope that's going to be within the next few days to the early part of next week."

The infectious disease expert said he foresees Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, which is set to be authorized today, to be available for frontline workers "by the very early part of next week."

Moderna's vaccine was produced with Fauci's employer, the National Institutes of Health, but he didn't confirm whether he'll get the vaccine made by Moderna or Pfizer. Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine was approved on December 11 and sent to every US state soon after, making it the first vaccine to both prevent COVID-19 infections and transmission.

On Thursday, a panel of health experts endorsed Moderna's vaccine, taking it one step closer to emergency authorization and distribution throughout the US.

"If you protect against clinical disease, that's very good. But if you also even prevent a person from getting actually infected, that would mean that you're preventing someone from passing the infection on to someone else, and that kind of interferes with the chain of transmission," Fauci told Guthrie.

The impending authorization of Moderna's vaccine, which doesn't have to be shipped and stored at icy-cold temperatures like Pfizer's, means more Americans will have access to a COVID-19 vaccine.

Fauci told Guthrie he expects vaccines will be available to the general public in the spring.

"Once you get through the priority list, then you could say it's sort of open season for anyone who is not necessarily on a priority list like the normal man and woman in the street, who has no underlying condition," Fauci said. "That likely will be somewhere March-ish, I said March/April, February/March. It's going to be a close call on that."

Fauci also stressed the importance of wearing a face mask and social distancing as the vaccine is rolled out.

"We can't just say, 'well there's vaccine on the horizon, so let's just forget about everything else.' We're in a difficult situation so we've got to do both. We've got to proceed with the rollout of the vaccine, but we've got to make sure that we stay with the public health measures," he said.