“Through our partnership with Fedex and UPS, we have already started sending the vaccine to all states and postal codes in the country; the first vaccine will be administered 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 medicines, to have authorized the emergency use of the vaccine of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and of the German BioNTech to prevent covid-19, on Friday night.
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The FDA announcement was made by the scientific director of the American agency, after the approval process made news 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 the end of Friday.
According to the American daily Washington Post, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has ordered the FDA to speed up the approval process. vaccine from Pfizer and the German BioNTech 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 further explained that it will be the governors “who decide where vaccines go in their states and who gets them first”.
“We want our elderly, healthcare and emergency professionals to be the first. This will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalizations,” he added.
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The vaccines are being distributed across the country as part of the first batch of 2.9 million doses that those responsible for the distribution operation said they 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.
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A few hours earlier, the outgoing President of the United States, Republican Donald Trump, used the social network Twitter – a habit he maintains for a month and a half of leaving the White House – to say that the FDA “remains a big, old, slow turtle“.
“Get the fucking vaccines out there now, Dr. Stephen Hahn. Stop playing and start saving lives“criticized Trump.
Pfizer’s vaccine authorization comes at a time when the United States records successive records of cases and deaths from the new coronavirus, with more than 200,000 new infections daily in the past few days.
The USA 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 swift approval of a covid-19 vaccine one of the flags of the election campaign, successively ensuring that an effective drug would be distributed before the election. 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 on Friday in the United States.
c / The day after tomorrow
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