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Trump: We’ll have coronavirus vaccine by end of year

“The doctors would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t say that.’ I’ll say what I think,” Trump said.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

President Donald Trump expressed confidence on Sunday that a working coronavirus vaccine will be available by the end of the year.

“I think we’ll have a vaccine by the end of the year,” Trump said during a Fox News virtual town hall meeting, adding he was “very confident” in his estimation.

“We’re so far ahead of any vaccine ever in history. These things would [normally] take two, four, five, six years,” he said.

Reportedly, Trump is trying to bypass the standard Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug approval regulations in order to quickly begin human trials.

Commenting on these reports, Trump said he wasn’t worried about the potential risks of speeding up the process because participants in human trials are volunteers who “know what they’re getting into.”

“The doctors would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t say that.’ I’ll say what I think,” Trump said.

The FDA gave health care professionals emergency-use authorization on Friday to treat seriously ill hospitalized coronavirus patients with “Remdesivir,” an anti-viral drug designed to shorten the recovery time for severely ill coronavirus cases, after it showed promising results during limited clinical trials.

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This was not the first time the FDA gave emergency-use authorization to a coronavirus drug.

Hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, was approved on April 8 by the FDA after Trump repeatedly promoted its benefits. However, after significant heart-related side effects were becoming a common occurrence, the FDA was prompted to warn doctors on April 24 to take precautions before deciding to administer the drug.

“We understand that health care professionals are looking for every possible treatment option for their patients and we want to ensure we’re providing them with the appropriate information needed for them to make the best medical decisions,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

“While clinical trials are ongoing to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs for coronavirus, there are known side effects of these medications that should be considered.”

“We encourage health care professionals making individual patient decisions to closely screen and monitor those patients to help mitigate these risks,” he added.

Over 1.1 million Americans are infected with coronavirus and more than 67,000 had died as a result of it, according to Johns Hopkins data published on Sunday.