President Donald Trump spoke out on Thursday to reveal that vaccine deliveries may begin as early as next week.
“The whole world is suffering and we are rounding the curve,” Trump said during a Thanksgiving video message for U.S. troops overseas. “And the vaccines are being delivered next week or the week after.”
The president went on to say that front-line workers, medical personnel, and senior citizens would be prioritized to receive the vaccine first, according to Fox News. He then made a point of saying that former Vice President Joe Biden should not be given credit for the vaccines, adding, “the vaccines were me.”
“Joe Biden failed with the swine flu, H1N1, totally failed with the swine flu,” Trump said in the message. “Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before and we got that approved and through and nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
The president also said that two companies have “already announced” vaccines that have shown effectiveness in trials and that “third, fourth and fifth ones are coming up soon.” He was referring to Moderna and Pfizer, which have both published studies showing their respective vaccines are 95% effective.
Trump is hoping that once the vaccines are out, tens of millions of Americans will receive vaccinations and life can begin to return to normal. This comes a week after Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, said that the United States could reach herd immunity by May of 2021.
“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I expect maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or the 12th of December,” he told CNN, adding that there will need to be about “70% or so of the population being immunized” to allow for “true herd immunity to take place” and for life to start returning to normal.
“That is likely to happen in the month of May or something like that, based on our plans,” Slaoui said.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, says he anticipates that thanks to vaccines, life in the US could return to normal around May pic.twitter.com/PpSDGYzpSb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 22, 2020
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