Trump shuts Biden out of summit
The Trump Administration is aiming to instill public confidence as well as claim major credit for the forthcoming coronavirus vaccines with a White House summit today featuring experts who will outline United States distribution plans in detail.
Officials from President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team are not invited, even though they will oversee the continuation of the largest vaccination programme in the nation’s history once he takes office on January 20.
Outgoing president Donald Trump is trying to frame vaccine development as a key component of his legacy.
The “Operation Warp Speed” summit will feature Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence, government experts, state leaders and business executives, as the White House looks to explain that the vaccine is safe and lay out plans to deliver it.
An official with the Biden transition confirmed that no invitation was extended. Officials from the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines also were not expected to attend.
Trump also planned to sign an Executive Order to prioritise Americans for coronavirus vaccines procured by the federal government. An official said the order would restrict the US government from donating doses to other nations until there is excess supply to meet domestic demand. It was not clear what, if any, impact the order would have on other nations’ abilities to access the vaccines.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday he expects his country to receive about 250,000 doses of the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine by the end of the year. Overnight Britain began rolling out the first phase of its vaccination programme using doses of the same product.
The US Food and Drug Administration is to meet on Friday to conduct a final review of the Pfizer vaccine, and it will meet later this month on one developed by Moderna.
Biden said last week that “there’s no detailed plan that we’ve seen” for how to get the vaccines out of containers, into syringes and then into people’s arms. Trump Administration officials insist that such plans have been developed, with the bulk of the work falling to states and municipal governments to ensure their most vulnerable populations are vaccinated first. —