Washington: Announcing that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 stands at 80,000, US President Donald Trump said the country would have a vaccine by the end of 2020.
“We are very confident we’re going to have a vaccine at the end of the year,” Efe news quoted Trump as saying in a virtual town hall hosted by Fox News on Sunday.
So far, US government health experts had cited January 2021 as the earliest date for a coronavirus vaccine to be available.
Asked if he wanted the US to develop the vaccine before any other country, the President replied: “I don’t care, I just want to get a vaccine that works,” adding “if it’s another country I’ll take my hat off.
Trump acknowledged that perhaps 90,000 deaths could not be called being “successful” in the fight against coronavirus but said it was preferable to the million or 2 million deaths there would have been without measures restricting movement.
