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-Editorial
Today, President Donald Trump said during his press conference that the vaccine against COVID-19 is going very well and hopes to have it available very soon.
“This part of Operation Warp Speed to have a vaccine. Many people thought it will take years but we are doing them in a couple of months,” Trump said.
Operation Warp Speed aims to deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 by January 2021, as part of a broader strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics (collectively known as countermeasures).
Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense announced an agreement with Moderna, Inc. to manufacture and deliver 100 million doses of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The federal government will own these vaccine doses.
Moderna will manufacture the vaccine doses while clinical trials are underway. Manufacturing in parallel with clinical trials expedites the traditional vaccine development timeline and builds toward the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed goal to begin delivering safe and effective vaccines to the American people by the end of the year. If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorizes use as outlined in agency guidance, the vaccine doses would be distributed and used as part of a COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
“In creating a vaccine portfolio for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump Administration is increasing the likelihood that the United States will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “Today’s investment represents the next step in supporting this vaccine candidate all the way from early development by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, through clinical trials, and now large-scale manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people.”
