The virus has also repeatedly penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle (File)
Washington:
U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to defeat the coronavirus by “unleashing American scientific genius” as he visited a COVID-19 vaccination facility in the swing state of North Carolina on Monday.
Trump appears to have put his hopes in the rapid emergence of an effective vaccine to both contain the epidemic still raging in the country and revive his hopes for re-election.
“We will achieve victory over the virus by unleashing American scientific genius,” he told reporters at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, hours after it was revealed that National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, had tested positive.
The facility was awarded a contract to mass produce an experimental vaccine developed by Novavax, as part of a multibillion-dollar government initiative called Operation Warp Speed.
The plan is to invest heavily in major pharmaceuticals to support their development and manufacturing efforts, with the goal of delivering 300 million doses of vaccine by January 2021.
It “has never been done before, but we believe it will work and very well,” added Trump, who then donned a black mask and toured the lab.
The United States is by far the worst affected country in the world, with more than 4.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nearly 150,000 deaths.
Although the number of new cases has stabilized in recent days, the United States has failed to lower its curve like other countries have done through lockdowns and physical distancing.
Trump’s latest comments confirmed that the administration believes that, in the case of the United States, only a vaccine can help.
“These are not masks. This is not the shutdown of the economy. Hopefully it is American ingenuity that will allow therapies and vaccines to finally defeat this,” the chief told ABC News on Sunday. of White House cabinet, Mark Meadows.
The virus has also repeatedly penetrated Trump’s inner circle, with O’Brien being the latest and longest-serving White House aide to test positive.
He “self-isolated and worked from a secure offsite location,” the White House said in a statement on Monday, adding that there was “no risk of exposure to the president or the vice-president”.
Other people previously infected include Vice President Mike Pence’s spokesperson Katie Miller and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign and his oldest son’s girlfriend.
Results by November?
The United States has spent more than $ 6.3 billion since March to fund vaccine development efforts under Operation Warp Speed.
The program is unwavering in its goals of getting vaccines to the American people first – unlike European leaders who have called for COVID-19 drugs to be a “global public good.”
The newcomer to the pharmaceutical sector Moderna, which, alongside AstraZeneca and two Chinese companies, is among the most advanced in its development schedule, began the final stage of its clinical trial on Monday.
The trial is being co-led by the National Institutes for Health (NIH) across the United States and is expected to recruit approximately 30,000 adult volunteers.
Participants will receive two doses of the vaccine given 28 days apart.
The first volunteer, a black woman identified as Robyn, took part in a video chat hosted by the NIH on Monday, telling viewers that her friends and relatives first told her “that was a bad idea.”
“And the reason was that in the African American community, we all know about Tuskegee’s experiences,” she added, referring to a 40-year US study of black men to see the effects of untreated syphilis.
The men involved were kept in the dark about the remedies on purpose.
But, added Robyn, she was encouraged by the laws that are now in place to prevent a repeat, and motivated by a desire to help others with a disease that disproportionately affects communities of color.
The irony of the process is that, given the endemic nature of the US outbreak, the results could arrive much sooner than the two years the trial is expected to run.
Daily new cases have peaked around the 66,000 mark in the past few days, making it more likely that trial participants will be exposed to the virus sooner rather than later.
“It’s a really optimistic scenario. It could be November,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said on Monday.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
