COVID-19 VACCINE WON'T BE MANDATORY FOR GENERAL PUBLIC IN US, SAYS TOP HEALTH EXPERT 

The United States' top infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, said the government will not make any COVID-19 vaccine obligatory for the general public- they could make it mandatory for some groups, like children.

"You don't want to mandate and try and force anyone to take a vaccine. We've never done that. You can mandate for certain groups of people like health workers, but for the general population you can't," said Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. He made this speech during a video talk organized by George Washington University.

He spoke on the example of the National Institutes of Health, where health workers can't treat patients without a flu shot. 

Meanwhile, Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who spoke hours earlier announced that coronavirus vaccines, once approved, would be mandatory for everyone in his country.

However, the United States' decentralized system of government, had in any case made a program of mandatory immunization unlikely. "It would be unenforceable and not appropriate," said Fauci, as per NDTV reports.

Recently, the administration of President Donald Trump has pre-ordered hundreds of millions of vaccine doses from six companies.