Washing:
US President Donald Trump on Monday accused the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Pfizer of withholding the COVID-19 vaccine announcement ahead of the election to prevent him from securing a “vaccine victory.”
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 always said!” Trump said in a tweet.
Early in the day, big pharma Pfizer announced that its vaccine, according to preliminary estimates, was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.
Pfizer said the vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the first interim efficacy analysis. The analysis assessed 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among trial participants, he said.
Trump alleged, “If Joe Biden was president you wouldn’t have had the vaccine for four years, and @US_FDA would never have approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives!”
Earlier, Trump had said he was working to remove a host of bureaucratic hurdles to speed up vaccine development and approval.
“Like I said for a long time, @Pfizer and the others would not announce a vaccine until after the election because they hadn’t had the courage to do it before. Likewise, @US_FDA should have announced it. earlier, not for political purposes, but to save lives! ”he tweeted.
Earlier today, President-elect Joe Biden said the announcement promised a chance to change that next year, but the tasks ahead of them remain the same.
“I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped make this breakthrough and give us such reason to hope,” he said. “At the same time, it’s also important to understand that the end of the battle against COVID-19 is still months away,” Biden said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the world welcomes the good news about a vaccine that could be a giant leap in the fight against the coronavirus.
“We all pray that this first evidence of extraordinary efficacy and safety remains true so that the vaccine can be approved and distributed quickly – but not a day sooner or a day later than it is ready,” she declared.
