President Trump yesterday claimed the coronavirus vaccine deliveries will begin as early as next week.
“The whole world is suffering and we are rounding the curve,” Trump said. “And the vaccines are being delivered next week or the week after.”
Trump noted that Frontline workers, medical personnel, and senior citizens will be the vaccines first recipients.
Trump also made a quick jab at Biden about taking credit for the vaccines.
“Joe Biden failed with the swine flu, H1N1, totally failed with the swine flu,” Trump said.
“Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before and we got that approved and through and nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
Jabs to Biden aside, this is an interesting prediction by Trump.
We know that the FDA meeting for Pfizer’s request for emergency use authorization is not until December 10.
It is after that meeting, perhaps directly after that meeting, that we expect the vaccines to be authorized and immediately made available to certain members of the public.
So if these vaccines started to go out next week, that would be a week earlier than expected.
That’s not a gigantic leap in terms of the overall timeline but anything that helps these vaccines get jumpstarted in a safe way will help society get back on track sooner.
It’s not clear to me exactly what route the vaccines could start going out next week or if Trump knows some thing about the FDA approval process that we don’t know.
(He did mention that they would be coming out possibly the week after next as well.)
Either way, that will be just the beginning of the vaccines getting out.
You can take a look at the entire expected timeline for the vaccines.
It’s expected that the vaccines will become widely available to young healthy people around April or May although if more vaccines are produced, the time could be sooner than expected.
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Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.