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By Reuters 
9h ago
By Manojna Maddipatla and Lisa Lambert
Public health officials from the US and Pfizer Inc said a Covid-19 vaccine could be ready for distribution as early as late October, just before the November elections in which the coronavirus pandemic is likely. be a big factor among voters deciding whether President Donald Trump wins. a second term.
Although the stakes are high for Republican Trump, who will face former Vice President Joe Biden on Nov. 3, there is no political pressure on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to swiftly pass a vaccine, the secretary said. House Press Release Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday.
“No one is pressuring the FDA to do anything,” McEnany told a news conference.
Trump has committed billions of federal dollars to rapidly develop vaccines against the virus, which has killed more than 185,000 people in the United States. Critics have said that Trump’s lack of leadership on the pandemic has contributed to the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked state public health officials to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine to high-risk groups in late October, according to documents. published by the agency.
Pfizer said Thursday that it should know by the end of October if a Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with German partner BioNTech SE is safe and effective. The US drugmaker said it will seek approval immediately if the trial results are positive. It has already manufactured hundreds of thousands of doses.
Still, America’s leading infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, said Thursday he didn’t count on having a vaccine ready so soon.
“These are all estimates,” Fauci told CNN, when asked about Pfizer’s comments, adding that most experts project that a vaccine will be ready by November or December. “It is conceivable that she could have it by October, although I don’t think it is likely.”
CDC “provided states with certain planning assumptions as they work on specific state plans for vaccine distribution, including the possibility of having limited quantities of vaccines in October and November,” an agency spokeswoman told Reuters.
The New York Times had previously reported that the CDC had contacted officials in all 50 states and five major cities with information on vaccine planning.
‘I WOULD NOT HESITATE FOR A MOMENT’
CDC documents showed the agency is preparing to have one or two Covid-19 vaccines available in limited quantities as early as the end of October.
The vaccines will be available at no cost first to high-risk groups, including healthcare workers, national security personnel, and nursing home residents and staff, according to the documents.
Regulators around the world have repeatedly insisted that the speed of development will not compromise the safety of vaccines, as the fastest results would come from conducting parallel trials that are usually done in sequence. Such guarantees have not convinced everyone that political pressure will not play a role.
Fauci told CNN that he is confident that the FDA and independent advisory panels of experts will review the data on vaccine candidates to make sure they are safe and effective.
Preliminary results from a survey conducted over the past three months in 19 countries showed that only about 70% of British and American respondents would take a Covid-19 vaccine if it were available, Scott Ratzan, co-leader of a group called Business Partners to Convince, he told Reuters in August.
Fauci told CNN that “I would not hesitate for a moment to take the vaccine myself and recommend it to my family” if the data showed it to be safe and effective.
AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer and Moderna Inc are among the most advanced in the race to develop vaccines to prevent Covid-19 infection or limit the severity of the disease. All of its candidates are in late-stage clinical trials.
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