On Sunday, President Donald Trump said he was confident that there would be a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.
He said, “We are very confident that we are going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year. We think we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this year, and we are pushing very hard.”
Public health authorities have said that it would take up to a year or 18 months for a coronavirus vaccine to be available. Usually, vaccines take many years to develop, produce, and distribute.
“We are pushing supply lines,” Trump said. “We don’t even have the final vaccine.”
Refereeing to drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, the president said, “Many companies are, I think, close.”
Johnson & Johnson, which has teamed up with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to manufacture a vaccine, has said the company is hoping to get approval for a vaccine in early 2021.
Meanwhile, researchers at Oxford University are working on vaccine development in association with the Serum Institute of India. They said that their vaccine, if proven effective, could be widely available by September.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said there are a few companies that are developing dozens of coronavirus vaccines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has said it could take up to 18 months to develop a vaccine. However, he said it was possible “to shave a couple of months off that.”
He told CBS News, “But, you know, you don’t want to over-promise. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
In January, Trump said he had coronavirus “totally under control.” However, in recent weeks, he acknowledged the scope of the ongoing crisis.
Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” is trying to rapidly cut down the time it takes to develop a vaccine. The project aims to make 300 million doses ready by January, according to the outlet.
In the United States, COVID-19 has spread to more than 1.1 million people and killed more than 68,000 so far.
Trump also said that his forecast for the number of US citizens who will die from COVID-19 has increased.
“I used to say 65,000 and now I’m saying 80 or 90, and it goes up, it goes up rapidly,” Trump said. However, he said millions of people will be saved by government measures.
