Trump Drops Major Vaccine News: 'A Matter of Weeks'
President Donald Trump insisted in a Tuesday interview that a coronavirus vaccine could be approved “in a matter of weeks.”
“The vaccine is going to be here very soon. And we’ve already got therapeutics with remdesivir and other things,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
The Trump administration’s push to quickly develop a vaccine by the end of the year, known as “Operation Warp Speed,” was launched in May.
“I’m not doing it for political reasons, I want the vaccine fast,” Trump said Tuesday.
“If this were the, I call it the OBiden, if this were the OBiden administration, you wouldn’t have a vaccine for years because they would have taken two or three years.”
Trump added, “We’re going to have a vaccine in a matter of weeks, it could be four weeks, it could be eight weeks, but we are going to have it.”
Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer are among the many pharmaceutical and biotech companies racing to find a vaccine.
“We have a lot of great companies, it’s not just one,” Trump said.
The president added that the vaccine could be available before the election on Nov. 3.
“[I]f we have something and we will start delivering it immediately upon getting it,” Trump said.
“But we’re very close to getting the vaccine and that’s something I look forward to. And I think it would be so good for the world, not just for us, but for the world.”
Trump’s comments come on the heels of several Democrats indicating they would not take the vaccine if it is approved too early because of political pressure.
In a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, said she would have to double-check the facts of a potential vaccine if one is approved and distributed before the election.
“Because [Trump is] looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend he has been a leader on this issue when he is not,” she said.
“I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about.”
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris said that she would not trust President Trump alone on any potential coronavirus vaccine.
“I will not take his word for it,” she told @DanaBashCNN. https://t.co/jHEDMSTF6L pic.twitter.com/uiypClzRFr
— CNN (@CNN) September 5, 2020
Joy Behar asserted last week on “The View” that any vaccine approved by the Trump administration might not be safe and she would only take it after Ivanka takes it.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and one of his senior advisers, responded on Twitter that she would “come on your show” and take the vaccine publicly.
“I trust the FDA and so should all Americans. Vanquishing this virus should be our collective top priority,” Ivanka Trump tweeted.
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