Experts worry Trump will rush vaccine to save presidency
SCIENTISTS in the US have expressed fears that the Trump administration is brushing aside safety concerns in an attempt to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine in time for the November election.
Experts said they are worried that the White House will push the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to overlook insufficient data from the process of clinical trials.
In May, Donald Trump announced the “Operation Warp Speed” initiative to develop and deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine by Jan 2021. The date has since been brought forward.
“There are a lot of people on the inside of this process who are very nervous about whether the administration is going to reach their hand into the Warp Speed bucket, pull out one or two or three vaccines, and say, ‘We’ve tested it on a few thousand people, it looks safe, and now we are going to roll it out’,” Dr Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’S vaccine advisory committee, told The New York Times. “They are really worried about that,” he added. “And they should be.”
In a tweet last month, the president explicitly tied vaccines to his re-election hopes in November.
“FDA has been great, at my instruction. We expect to have a vaccine available very, very early before the end of the year, far ahead of schedule,” he said. “We’re very close to having that finalised.”
Dozens of Covid-19 vaccines are currently in development in the US.
Yesterday, for the first time, Mr Trump publicly criticised White House coronavirus response co-ordinator Dr Deborah Birx after she delivered dire warnings about the pandemic.
She said the virus had entered a “new phase” and was “extraordinarily widespread”.
The president wrote on Twitter that her comments were “Pathetic!”
Meanwhile, a White House spokesman said the vaccine timeline had no connection to Mr Trump’s re-election.
“It has nothing to do with politics,” he said. “The rapid research, development, trials and eventual distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine is emblematic of President Trump’s highest priority − the health and safety of the American people.”