To wash:
US President Donald Trump on Monday accused the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Pfizer of withholding the COVID-19 vaccine announcement before the election to prevent him from obtaining a “winning vaccine.”
The US Food and Drug Administration “and the Democrats didn’t want me to get a WIN vaccine before the election, so it came out five days later, like I’ve said all along!” Trump said in a tweet.
Earlier in the day, leading drugmaker Pfizer announced that its vaccine, according to preliminary estimates, is 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.
Pfizer said the candidate vaccine was found to be more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants with no evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis. The analysis evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the trial participants, he said.
Trump claimed: “If Joe Biden were president, you would not have the vaccine for another four years, nor would the @US_FDA have approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives!”
Earlier, Trump had said that he worked to remove a large number of bureaucratic hurdles to accelerate the development and approval of a vaccine.
“As I have said for a long time, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a vaccine after the election, because they did not have the courage to do it before. Also, @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but to save! lives! “he tweeted.
Earlier in the day, President-elect Joe Biden said the announcement promises the opportunity to change that next year, but the tasks ahead now remain the same.
“I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough and give us cause for hope,” he said. “At the same time, it is also important to understand that the battle against COVID-19 is still months away,” Biden said.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said the world welcomes the good news about a vaccine that could be a big step forward in the fight against the coronavirus.
“We all pray that this early evidence of extraordinary efficacy and safety is true so that the vaccine can be approved and distributed soon, but not a day before or a day after it is ready,” he said.
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