House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says that science should support any coronavirus vaccine after President Donald Trump said that he expects a vaccine will begin to be distributed by October.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday, Pelosi said, “We don’t want [the vaccine] one day sooner than it is ready from a safety and efficacy standpoint. We don’t want it one day later and so we want to make sure there is no political interference in the timing and decisions that are made.”
Pelosi said that when the vaccine is available that it will be distributed in an “ethically designed way to reach everyone, not just those with an in or with money and the rest because in our country, unless everyone is protected, none of us is safe unless we’re all safe.”
She continued, “Let’s stick with the science, let’s skip the politics when it comes to having the clinical trials and the timing of it all.”
Pelosi on a COVID-19 vaccine: ’We don’t want it one day sooner than it is ready from a safety and efficacy standpoint. We don’t want it one day later. We want to make sure there is no political interference’ pic.twitter.com/SOq0fyxxVY
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) September 18, 2020
During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Trump said, “We’re very close to that vaccine as you know and I think much closer than I think most people want to say. We think we can start some time 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.”
But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said that the vaccine will not be available until much later, telling senators during a hearing, “If you’re asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public, so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we’re probably looking at third, late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”
Trump shot down Redfield’s timeline, saying, “I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information.”