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“Through our partnership with Fedex and UPS, we have already begun shipping the vaccine to every state and zip code in the country – the first vaccine will be delivered in less than 24 hours,” Trump said in a speech in the Oval Office.
The outgoing president made the announcement minutes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that regulates the marketing of drugs, having authorized the emergency use of the vaccine from the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German BioNTech to prevent covid-19, on Friday night.
The FDA announcement was made by the US agency’s chief science officer, after the approval process made headlines due to political pressure from the White House, which threatened to fire the FDA official if the agency did not approve the use of the vaccine by late Friday.
According to the Washington Post, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ordered the FDA to speed up the approval process. Pfizer and German BioNTech vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Otherwise, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn should resign.
The newspaper cited several sources associated with this process on condition of anonymity, specifying that the threat from Washington caused the approval to be rushed.
Trump to attack
In his speech, Trump also explained that governors “will decide where vaccines go in their states and who receives them first.”
“We want our senior, health care and emergency professionals to come first. This will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalizations,” he added.
The vaccines are being distributed throughout the country as part of the first batch of 2.9 million doses that those responsible for the distribution operation said could be shipped within 24 hours of authorization.
Pfizer also promised 25 million doses by the end of the year (each vaccine requires two doses) and, by March, the 100 million doses purchased by the Trump administration for $ 1.95 billion.
A few hours earlier, the outgoing president of the United States, Republican Donald Trump, used the social network Twitter – a custom that he maintains for a month and a half of leaving the White House – to say that the FDA “is still a big old slow turtle“.
“Get the fucking shots out now, Dr. Stephen Hahn. Stop playing and start saving lives“criticized Trump.
The authorization of the Pfizer vaccine comes at a time when the United States is registering successive records of cases and deaths from the new coronavirus, with more than 200,000 new infections daily in recent days.
The United States is the country with the highest number of deaths (294,690) and also confirmed infections (more than 15.8 million).
Trump, defeated in the November 3 presidential election by the Democratic candidate and now president-elect, Joe Biden, made the swift approval of a covid-19 vaccine one of the flags of the election campaign, successively ensuring that a effective medicine before the elections. end of the year and that the United States would be the first country to receive the vaccine.
However, this did not happen, as The United Kingdom was the first country to start the vaccination campaign of the same vaccine approved Friday in the United States.
c / The day after tomorrow
