Trump celebrates vaccine ‘miracle’
Aides downplay report US did not secure extra doses
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump celebrated the expected approval of the first U.S. vaccine for the coronavirus Tuesday as the White House worked to instill confidence in the massive distribution effort that will largely be executed by President-elect Joe Biden
Trump said the expected approvals are coming before most people thought possible. “They say it’s somewhat of a miracle, and I think that’s true,” he declared.
Trump led Tuesday’s White House event celebrating “Operation Warp Speed,” his administration’s effort to produce and distribute safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19. The first vaccine, from drugmaker Pfizer, is expected to receive endorsement by a panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers as soon as this week, with delivery of 100 million doses — enough for 50 million Americans — expected in coming months.
“Every American who wants the vaccine will be able to get the vaccine and we think by spring we’re going to be in a position nobody would have believed possible just a few months ago,” Trump said.
Pfizer developed its vaccine outside of “Operation Warp Speed,” but is partnering with the federal government on manufacturing and distribution.
Trump and his aides
hope to tamp down skepticism among some Americans about the vaccines and help build the outgoing Republican president’s legacy.
However, Trump’s administration was also facing new scrutiny Tuesday after failing to lock in a chance to buy millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, which has been shown to be highly effective against COVID-19. That decision could delay the delivery of a second batch of doses until Pfizer fulfills other international contracts.
Trump used the event to sign an executive order in which Alex Azar, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Depart
ment, is directed to ensure that Americans have priority access to the vaccine.
A senior administration official said the order would restrict the federal government from delivering doses to other nations until there is excess supply to meet domestic demand, but it was not immediately clear what the practical impact would be.
Tuesday’s “Operation Warp Speed” event featured Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a host of government experts, state leaders and business executives, as the White House looked to explain that the vaccine is safe and lay out the administration’s
plans to bring it to the American people. But officials from Biden’s transition team, which will oversee the bulk of the largest vaccination program in the nation’s history once he takes office Jan. 20, were not invited.
Biden said last week that in meetings with Trump administration officials his aides have discovered 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 local
governments to ensure their most vulnerable populations are vaccinated first. In all, about 50,000 vaccination sites are enrolled in the government’s distribution system.
But career officials insisted it was still too early to declare victory.
“We don’t want to get out in front of ourselves,” said Army Gen. Gustave Perna, responsible for overseeing the logistical and distribution efforts. “As my father used to say, ‘You can only spike the football when you’re in the end zone.’ Well, what is the end zone described to us here? Shots in arms.”
Trump, meanwhile, defended his decision to hold indoor holiday parties at the White House this month, though they have attracted hundreds of largely maskless supporters contrary to his administration’s warnings that the public should avoid such settings.
“Well, they’re Christmas parties,” he said.
The Trump administration insists that between the Pfizer vaccine, the vaccine from Moderna and others in the pipeline, the U.S. will be able to accommodate any American who wants to be vaccinated by the end of the second quarter of 2021.
The Food and Drug Administration’s panel of outside vaccine experts is to meet Thursday to conduct a final review of the Pfizer vaccine, and it will meet later this month on the Moderna version.
The decision not to secure additional Pfizer purchases last summer was first reported by The New York Times.
Azar told NBC the administration is “continuing to work across manufacturers to expand the availability of releasable, of FDAapproved vaccine as quickly as possible. We do still have that option for an additional 500 million doses.”
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who is leading the government’s vaccine effort, noted the Trump administration had been looking at a number of different vaccines during the summer.
He told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday that “no one reasonably would buy more from any one of those vaccines because we didn’t know which one would work and which one would be better than the other.”