Washington — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said clinical trials on a coronavirus vaccine could be stopped early if they provide positive results that show it is safe and effective.

In an interview with Kaiser Health News published Tuesday, Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said a Data and Safety Monitoring Board, which is composed of research experts that review data from clinical trials, has the power to end the trials early.

The independent board, Fauci said, could decide "the data is so good right now that you can say it's safe and effective." If the clinical trials were to produce results that are overwhelmingly positive, scientists would have a "moral obligation" to stop the trial early and make the vaccine available to all participants in the study, speeding up the process to make it more widely available.