Vaccine by end of year, says Trump, experts not sure
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he believes a vaccine for Covid-19 will be found by the end of the year. “We think we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this year,” he said at a virtual town hall hosted at the Lincoln Memorial.
“Doctors would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t say that.’ I’ll say what I think. I think we’re going to have a vaccine much sooner than later,” Trump said.
His remarks come amid warnings by leading experts that scientists may not be able to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 at all and pointed that it has happened before in the case of HIV and dengue.
The US President mentioned as an example Johnson & Johnson’s
vaccine candidate, which is scheduled for human trials sometime in September. He also spoke of a drug from Moderna that went under phase one trial in Washington state in March.
The Trump administration has launched an ambitious project called Operation Warp Speed to expedite the hunt for a vaccine in a private-public partnership.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he believes a vaccine for Covid-19 will be found by the end of the year. “We think we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this year,” he said at a virtual town hall hosted by Fox News at the Lincoln Memorial.
“Doctors would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t say that.’ I’ll say what I think. I think we’re going to have a vaccine much sooner than later,” Trump said.
His remarks come amid warnings by leading experts that scientists may not be able to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 at all and pointed that it has happened before in case of HIV and dengue among others.
The US president mentioned the Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate, which is scheduled for human trials sometime in September. Also, a drug from Moderna went under phase one trial in Washington state in March.
The Trump administration has launched an ambitious project called Operation Warp Speed to expedite the hunt for a vaccine in a private-public partnership. The mission is reported to have narrowed down the search from an estimated 93 to 14, with plans to further narrow it down to seven, and eventually to three or four for clinical trials in January.
Also, Trump said he fears US fatalities will reach 100,000, as he had recently hinted. “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people,” he said. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this. This should have been stopped in China.” US deaths from Covid-19 are nearing 70,000.
Last week, Trump had said that he hoped the overall US toll will not cross the 100,000-mark, changing his earlier assessment of 240,000 back in March.
The country reported 1,313 fatalities and 25,501 infections from Covid-19 over the last 24 hours.