Trump pledges 100M vaccines in 2020
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump touted vaccine distribution plans in a Friday news conference and pledged 100 million vaccine doses by the year’s end, a promise that contradicts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most optimistic projections.
“We will have manufactured at least 100 million vaccine doses before the end of the year, and likely much more than that,” Trump said. “We expect to have enough vaccines for every American by April.”
The promise of 100 million vaccine doses this year represents the president’s latest contradiction of his own public health agency, and follows a week in which Trump repeatedly challenged CDC Director Robert Redfield about the importance of masks and when most Americans can expect a vaccine.
“We essentially have it,” the president said of a vaccine Friday. “We’ll be announcing it fairly soon.”
But the testing protocols for the two vaccines furthest along in clinical trials, manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, which were released Thursday, show that analysis of the data will likely stretch into December 2020 and early 2021.
Internal CDC documents posted by The New York Times show that under the most optimistic scenario, if the two vaccines both prove to be safe and effective on an accelerated timeline, 35 million to 45 million doses could be available by late December. If just one of the vaccines is seen as safe and effective, only 20 million to 30 million doses will be available and if just the other vaccine is authorized, 15 million doses will be available, according to the documents. The internal documents were independently confirmed by CQ Roll Call as authentic.
Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s vaccine and therapeutics development initiative, has allocated at least $11 billion in public funds to research and manufacture a vaccine. CQ Roll Call has asked Operation Warp Speed, Moderna and Pfizer how many doses of vaccine are currently manufactured and ready to ship but has not yet received replies.
The CDC for years has overseen national immunization efforts, like the Vaccines for Children program, which gives out pediatric vaccines. But Trump described the coronavirus vaccine distribution enterprise as “relying on our military” and Operation Warp Speed.
“Distribution will begin within 24 hours after notice,” he said. “Massive amounts will be delivered through our great military.”
Operation Warp Speed leaders Moncef Slaoui and Gustave F. Perna were present at the news conference, while Redfield was not.
Slaoui wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial that 300 million doses could be available by “mid-2021.”
Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, who works with states and the CDC on vaccinations, expressed wariness about the president’s declaration.
“It’s important for us to be prepared for any distribution scenario, but it’s premature to make announcements on when any vaccine would demonstrate the safety and effectiveness necessary to be approved for distribution,” she said.
Carlos del Rio, Emory University School of Medicine professor of medicine, pointed out that it’s not yet certain any vaccines will be demonstrated to be safe and effective.
“There are several issues here but one is the clinical trials,” del Rio said in an email. “Through (the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) the government has paid for millions of doses of vaccines that are being produced. If the vaccines prove to be effective in clinical trials then those millions of doses will be ready and available. If the trials show the vaccine not to be effective then those vaccines are discarded.”
