US President Donald Trump on Monday, 9 November, alleged that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Democrats withheld the announcement on COVID-19 vaccine prior to the elections to prevent him a “vaccine win”.
Trump also alleged that Pfizer did not have the courage to announce the results on the effectiveness of the vaccine before the presidential elections.
He went on to say that the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should have announced the vaccine results earlier, and shouldn’t have withheld it for “political purpose.”
In another tweet, Trump alleged that if Joe Biden had been the President, then there wouldn’t have been a vaccine for another four years.
"If Joe Biden were President, you wouldn't have the vaccine for another four years, nor would the @US_FDA have ever approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives!" Trump tweeted.
Trump’s Vaccine Promise
Earlier in September, Trump had said the US government would start distributing a vaccine by October.
“We’re very close to that vaccine as you know and I think much closer than I think most people want to say,” Trump had said while speaking to reporters, according to a report by Reuters.
He had also said, “We think we can start sometime in October. So as soon as it’s announced we’ll be able to start. That will be from mid-October on. It may be a little bit later than that,” Hindustan Times reported.
On Monday, pharma major Pfizer announced that its vaccine, as per preliminary estimates, has been found to be 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.
The COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE has reportedly prevented more than 90 percent of infections in a study with tens of thousands of volunteers. This, according to Bloomberg, is being deemed as the most encouraging scientific advancement so far in the battle against the coronavirus.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
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