Trump bets on vaccine for shot in arm
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump vowed to defeat the coronavirus by “unleashing American scientific genius” as he toured a COVID-19 vaccine facility in the swing state of North Carolina on Monday. Trump appears to have pinned his hopes on the swift emergence of a successful vaccine to both contain the country’s still raging epidemic and revive his faltering re-election hopes.
“We will achieve a victory over the virus by unleashing American scientific genius,” he told reporters at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, hours after it was revealed national security advisor Robert O’Brien had tested positive. The facility has been awarded a contract to mass produce an experimental vaccine developed by Novavax, as part of a multi-billion dollar government initiative dubbed Operation Warp Speed.
The plan involves investing heavily in leading pharmaceuticals to aid their development and manufacturing efforts, with the goal of delivering 300 million doses of vaccine by Jan 2021. It’s “never been done before, but we suspect it’s going to work, and work very well,” added Trump, who later donned a black mask and toured the lab.
The United States is by far the worst-hit country in the world, with more than 4.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 150,000 deaths. Though the number of new cases has leveled off over the past few days, the US has failed to push its curve
down as other nations have done through lockdowns and physical distancing.
Trump’s latest comments confirmed that the administration believes that, in America’s case, only a vaccine can help. “It’s not masks. It’s not shutting down the economy. Hopefully, it is American ingenuity that will allow for therapies and vaccines to ultimately conquer this,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told ABC News on Sunday. The virus has also repeatedly penetrated Trump’s inner circle, with O’Brien the latest and most senior White House aide to test positive. He “has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site,” the White House said in a statement Monday, adding that there was “no risk of exposure to the president or the vice president”. Others who have been previously infected include Vice President Mike Pence’s spokeswoman Katie Miller, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the Trump campaign and his elder son’s girlfriend.
The US has spent more than $6.3 billion since March to fund vaccine development efforts under Operation Warp Speed. The program is unabashed in its aims to procure vaccines for the American people first - unlike European leaders who have called for COVID-19 drugs to be a “global public good”.