It's unlikely the coronavirus will be eradicated without a vaccine, Johnson & Johnson's chief scientific officer said Sunday on ABC's "This Week," in response to comments made by the president last week.

"With or without a vaccine, it's going to pass, and we're going to be back to normal," President Donald Trump said last week.

In response on Sunday, Dr. Paul Stoffels told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, "(It) would be great if the disease goes away very quickly, but we don't think so. It's now spreading around the world so fast."

On March 30, Johnson & Johnson announced that it had selected a leading coronavirus vaccine candidate and the company anticipates beginning human trials on it by September 2020.

The company has partnered with the U.S. government to develop a vaccine, with the Trump administration awarding a grant of nearly half a billion dollars to aid their research.

"We need these sort of efforts at J&J -- and others are doing them," Dr. George Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer at biotechnology firm Regeneron, said in a joint interview with Stoffels. "We need the sort of efforts that we're doing that can provide these immediate sources of both prevention and treatment that can have an impact until we get a vaccine."

Unlike Johnsons & Johnson, Regeneron is developing COVID-19 antibody treatment designed to prevent and treat the coronavirus.

Working to adapt one of their drugs, Kevzara, to treat COVID-19, Regeneron says it should begin clinical studies in June.

"It's possible that within a month or two after that that we would actually have data that our antibody cocktail could be important stopgap until we get an effective and safe vaccine," Yancopoulos told Stephanopoulos.

While Johnson & Johnson says the typical vaccine development process takes five to seven years, the company has admitted they are moving on a "substantially accelerated timeframe" to find a vaccine.

Johnson & Johnson said they plan to have a billion doses of the vaccine available once it is developed.

This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.