President Donald Trump pushed pharmaceutical executives on Monday to develop a coronavirus within ‘a couple of months’ – as the U.S. death toll reached six. But he was warned by his own most senior expert, Dr. Tony Fauci, who told the president directly that he had repeatedly told him it would take at least a year.
We’re working very hard to expedite the longer process of developing a vaccine. We’re also moving with maximum speed to develop a therapy so that we can help people recover as quickly as possible and a lot of recovery going on,’ the president said during a one-hour briefing in the Cabinet room with executives from 10 pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies.
He also offered up Seattle to one company as a testing ground after Washington state was hit hard by the virus. All six U.S. deaths have happened there.
The executives, however, warned the president that a vaccine to deploy in a large scale public way would take a year to a year and a half even as they emphasized all are at various points in the testing stage, with some saying they could be at the human testing stage in a few months.
Trump latched on to that human testing number only to have Dr Tony Fauci, the NIH’s director, put the brakes on his hopes for a quick solution.
Like I’ve been telling you, a year to a year and a half,’ Dr. Fauci said.
President Trump shrugged him off. ‘I like the sound of a couple of months better,’ he said.
‘I’ve heard, very quick numbers, a matter of months. Pretty much a year would be an outside number. So I think that’s not a bad,’ he added of the time table for a vaccine.
‘When is it going to be deployable,’ Fauci reminded him. ‘That is going to be at the earliest a year to a year and a half, no matter how fast you go.’
The president was also focused on the situation in Washington state, where dozens of schools have closed and nearly 30 firefighters and police officers are in quarantine.
Dr. J. Joseph Kim, the CEO of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, mentioned his company would be doing clinical trials soon overseas on a vaccine. In April of this year, followed by shortly thereafter, trials in China and South Korea,’ he said.
The majority of cases there appear to be linked to a nursing facility, the Life Care Center of Kirkland, in Washington, where about 50 residents and workers have reported feeling ill.
During the briefing, the executives reminded the president of the testing that goes into play in developing a vaccine.
‘Vaccines have to be tested because there’s precedent for vaccines to make things worse. And you don’t want to rush and treat a million people and find out you’re making 900,000 worse,’ said Dr. Leonard Schleifer, the CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
But they also assured the president a vaccine would be ready for next year’s flu season.
‘That’s the goal,’ said Dr. Paul Stoffels, Chief Scientific Officer of Johnson and Johnson.
But a few pointed out therapies to treat the virus will likely be ready by end of the summer, a timetable that seemed to please President Trump.
‘The treatment element of it goes faster than the vaccine, which in my opinion in this case would be better,’ Trump said.
He praised the executives for their work and he down played an additional federal funding for the companies to do their work.
Some of them are so rich they can loan money to the federal government,’ he said.
Pence, meanwhile, promised daily briefings to keep the public informed about the pandemic.
Get used to seeing us,’ he told reporters in the White House briefing room on Monday evening.
Pence also announced that ‘within the next 12 hours, 100 per cent screening on all direct flights from across Italy and South Korea’ for signs of the coronavirus, which would consist of multiple temperature checks on passengers before they boarded.
His remarks followed comments from President Trump that there would be more travel restrictions in place soon.
Yes, we are,’ the president in response to a question on whether the administration is eyeing new travel restrictions to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. ‘From certain countries where they’re having more of a breakout,’ he said but declined to name the specific countries.
Pence reminded the public there were no restrictions on domestic travel in the United States but declined to answer a question on whether he’d take his family to Disney World for spring break.
Let’s be clear: The risk to the American people from the coronavirus remains low,’ he said.
Separately, Dr. Fauci told reporters on Monday that the disease had likely reached ‘pandemic proportions’ as 100 cases were confirmed across the U.S.
We’re dealing with an evolving situation. We’re dealing with clearly an emerging infectious disease that has now reached outbreak proportions and likely pandemic proportions,’ Dr Fauci said. ‘If you look at multiple definitions of what a pandemic is… multiple sustained transmissions of of a highly infectious agent in multiple regions of the globe.’
Dr Fauci went on to say the U.S. might need to consider ‘social mitigation,’ including closing down schools and not allowing events where large crowds are in confined spaces.
We’re not ready for it right now but we need to be at least thinking about the possibility,’ he said in the interview that will air in full on NBC Nightly News on Monday.
It comes after a New York doctor warned coronavirus cases in the U.S. will surge into the thousands by next week and the former head of the FDA claimed three critical weeks were lost in containing the spread of the virus due to faulty test kits given out by the government.
Health officials have been scrambling to get their own coronavirus testing kits up and running after getting stuck with faulty tests from the federal government that they said left them unable to diagnose people quickly.
State and local authorities are now also stepping up testing for the illness as the number of new cases grew to 100across the U.S. on Monday, with new infections announced in California, Florida, Illinois, Rhode Island, New York and Washington state.
