‘I will not take his word’ if Trump announces a vaccine is ready in October, Kamala Harris says
Donald Trump told a crowd a coronavirus vaccine could be ready before the election, but Kamala Harris says she needs to hear it from a credible source
President Donald Trump is pressuring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate the vaccine development process to help pharmaceutical companies deliver a COVID-19 vaccine potentially before election day, and Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, is incredulous about the odds.
Trump, who is now in full-fledged campaign mode, has touted over the summer that a panacea could be available by yearend, and earlier this week he told a Pennsylvania crowd that it “might even be delivered before the end of October,” CNN reports.
Harris, currently a U.S. senator from California, said she won’t trust Trump if he announces a vaccine is ready next month and that it would need to be confirmed by credible sources before she takes one.
“I will not take his word for it,” Harris said in an interview clip, posted to Twitter Saturday, with CNN‘s Dana Bash, She was asked if she would take a dose if distributed prior to the November contest.
READ MORE: States should prepare to distribute COVID vaccine by late October: CDC
“I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us,” Harris said. “I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also told CNN that it was “unlikely, not impossible” for a coronavirus vaccine to be available to the public by October, but rather November or December at the earliest.
READ MORE: Tiffany Haddish talks coronavirus vaccines, reveals diagnosis in chat with Dr. Fauci
Harris was asked by Bush if health officials would be the ones who had “the last word” over the president when it comes to the validity of a COVID-19 vaccine becoming available in such a short amount of time. Harris stated she didn’t believe so, based on past issues from Trump.
“If past is prologue, then they will not, they’ll be muzzled, they’ll be suppressed, they will be sidelined,” Harris answered, “because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader on this issue when he is not.”
The president once blocked Fauci from testifying at a congressional hearing that dealt with the his administration’s response to the pandemic, according to CNBC.
As previously reported by theGrio, the president ordered hospital to send coronavirus stats and updates to a White House database first, bypassing the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This caused fear from health agencies that COVID-19 facts would be manipulated before being transferred to CDC officials.
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