A New York doctor is taking on a new role as the principal-lead investigator of the promising vaccine trial.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Monday that Dr. Stephen Thomas was appointed the lead principal investigator for the world-wide Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial.

The recent announcement from Pfizer in Pearl River that their coronavirus vaccine is 90% effective is creating a lot of hope and concern with how quickly the vaccine will be developed.

Dr. Thomas, chief of infectious diseases at SUNY Upstate Medical University, has a message for those who are still hesitant. "They're not taking risks from a safety perspective, and taking a financial risk and that is allowing timelines to move very quickly. The other thing is it used to take the FDA a really long time, you could wait up to two years from the time you submitted a packet asking for a license to weigh in, but they've been chipping away at that timeline for years to less than 10 months. "

More than 300 adult volunteers are enrolled in SUNY Upstate's portion of the 45,000 person trial. It will also be one of a few sites to add children to the study soon.