President Donald Trump said the COVID-19 vaccine will be available to all Americans by April 2021.
“We will have manufactured at least 100 million doses of vaccine by the end of the year, and probably much more than that. Hundreds of millions of doses will be available each month, and we expect there to be enough vaccines for all Americans by April,” the representative said at a press conference in the White House.
The chair stressed that these estimates are based “on manufacturing that is in process, and is in process immediately now.”
“As soon as the COVID-19 vaccine is approved by the authorities, they would begin distribution within 24 hours”
For his part, the White House working group member for COVID-19, physician Scott Atlas, who was at the press conference, stated that “people on the priority list (because of their age or medical condition) will be able to receive the vaccine, no one will be forced to get vaccinated. By April, all Americans who want to be vaccinated could be vaccinated. It’s not forced vaccination.”
America’s brilliant doctors and scientists have been working around the clock to produce a COVID-19 vaccine—and 3 vaccines are in the final stage of clinical trials.
All vaccine candidates are going through the gold standard of clinical trials with a heavy emphasis on safety. pic.twitter.com/Womv7KVliK
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 18, 2020
On Wednesday Trump disavowed one of the government’s top health experts by talking about the plan to distribute the future disease vaccine, which he estimated will be ready by the election.
“We will be able to distribute 100 million doses of vaccines by the end of 2020, and then a very large number later,” he said.
The director of the Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, had stated at a Senate hearing that the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be distributed on a limited basis and will not be widely available until the third quarter of 2021.
Asked about it, Trump considered Redfield wrong and claimed to have felt “surprised” by his words.
This Friday, a reporter re-released a question to Trump regarding Redfield’s statements that the vaccine could be widely available by the third quarter of next year, to which the representative replied: That’s the average, we think we can beat that number substantially.”
The COVID-19 vaccine has become the subject of political debate in the U.S., ahead of The November 3 general election, in which Trump runs for re-election and will beat former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic aspiring White House.
The U.S. is the country most affected by the pandemic, with more than 6.7 million cases detected and more than 198,000 deaths.
