President Trump Pressures Vaccine Developers, Wants 100 Million Doses by Fall
Scientists across the United States are fast-tracking the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Still, President Trump wants them to pull ahead of the deadly virus through "Operation Warp Speed," according to a recent report.
In the war against coronavirus, as the U.S. hits more than 1.29 million confirmed COVID-19 cases with more than 76,000 deaths, time is the second biggest enemy.
In a White House press briefing during the meeting with the coronavirus task force on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained the government effort to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
"The president said that the timelines that the drug companies were laying out were unacceptable that we needed to move faster," Azar told the press.
Azar added President Donald Trump wants medical experts working on the vaccine to produce 100 million doses by the fall and 300 million doses by January.
"There are no guarantees, this is drug development," he said. Although the secretary admitted the call to fast-track, the vaccine in seven months was ambitious.
On Sunday, President Trump forecasted that a coronavirus vaccine could be ready by the end of the year. Top U.S. scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci also affirmed that setting the timeline to get the vaccine done by early January is just attainable.
According to Azar, the drug company's normal vaccine process requires spacing out vaccine development between four different phases before proceeding to manufacture for commercial purposes.
"That's what leads to these extremely long timelines for drug and vaccine development," Azar said. "The president said that's not acceptable, we have the money, the resources, the brainpower to take all across the Us government and the private sector to compress all those timelines."
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Once a successful candidate is found, the group would be told immediately to jumpstart vaccine manufacturing.
"If any country can develop a vaccine, we will deploy all available resources, use all, use all available technology and do so here in the United States to bring manufacturing scale to that," he said.
Additionally, Vice President Mike Pence also said the federal government would fund mass manufacturing of promising vaccine candidates, even when the trial process is still ongoing.
"We're going to tell them to go ahead and start manufacturing now, and we're going to pay for that even if we get to the end, and there are 50 million doses that actually don't work," Vice President Pence said.
Pence added that once vaccine development trials reach phase three, the CDC could issue a waiver that allows putting it to use.
Meanwhile, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said preliminary approval for the COVID-19 vaccine would go through a lengthy and complicated process.
"I do want to emphasize one thing, we want to remove any unnecessary delays, but we will use data and science, which is a promise to the American people to fulfill our obligation regarding safety and ecovacy regarding a vaccine."
COVID-19 vaccine development efforts in the U.S. are spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health in partnership with the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV). It also involves biopharmaceutical companies, the federal government, the Gates Foundation, as well as the European Medicine Association.
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