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The director of the US department of health assumes that the population cannot be vaccinated before the middle of next year at least. However, President Trump does not seem to like his assessment.
Contrary to the statement by the director of the US Centers for Disease CDC, US President Donald Trump expects extensive vaccination of the US population by the end of the year. “As soon as the FDA approves the vaccine, we will be able to distribute 100 million doses by the end of 2020, and a large number even much earlier,” Trump said at a news conference Wednesday.
Robert Redfield, director of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had previously announced at a hearing in Washington that a Covid-19 vaccine would not be available to the general public until the middle of next year or a bit. later. He was under oath.
Vaccination should then be made available to citizens progressively and practically free of charge. Among other things, health system employees would have priority. “If you ask me when it will be available to the entire American population so that we can use the vaccine and get back to our normal lives, then I think we are looking towards the end of the second or third quarter of 2021,” he said. Redfield during the Senate hearing.
Trump says head of authority is “confused”
“I think he probably got the question wrong,” Trump said at a White House news conference of Redfield’s remarks. “I think he was confused.” The vaccine will be distributed much faster. “You may not know about the distribution process.”
Renowned immunologist Anthony Fauci confirmed a little later in a live interview with the “Wall Street Journal” that he did not expect to return to normal through an extensive vaccination campaign until the middle and end of next year. Many people from particularly vulnerable groups will probably be able to get vaccinated in early 2021. “But the idea that you can vaccinate the entire population that wants to be vaccinated in a month or two will be very, very difficult to do,” Fauci said. At the same time, he said there was still no certainty that there would be an effective and safe vaccine, even if he was “cautiously optimistic.” Fauci had already said last week that he expected a corona vaccine to be 70 to 75 percent efficient.
Debate over masks: here too Trump contradicts the head of the CDC
Redfield also said in the Senate that masks are currently the “most important tool” in the fight against the pandemic. He would even go as far as to say that a mask offers greater protection against the coronavirus than a vaccine, the CDC chief said.
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Trump disagreed here too. “No, a vaccine is much more effective than face masks,” Trump said. He called Redfield and told him that he had answered the question incorrectly from his point of view. Redfield then posted two tweets in which he wrote, among other things, that he believed in the importance of vaccines, and that currently the best protection is to wear masks, wash your hands, and keep your distance. He did not withdraw any of his earlier statements.
The pandemic becomes an electoral problem
Trump had previously accused his own administration’s employees of deliberately slowing down the development of a corona vaccine. The crown crisis with more than 195,000 deaths has become a major issue in the US election campaign for the White House. Trump had spoken several times that a vaccine could be approved until the end of October, and therefore before the presidential election on November 3. Trump lags behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the polls.
When asked by a journalist why people should trust Trump in the pandemic while he contradicts the head of his health department, the president said, “Because we did a great job.”
Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BionTech confirmed last week that they would apply for approval in October if their Phase 3 study of a joint vaccine candidate was successful.
