“This was a very big day therapeutically, cure wise and vaccine wise. Tremendous progress has been made as I’ve been saying for two weeks because I’ve been seeing what’s going on and I think spearheading it largely,” Trump told reporters. “Some big announcements are coming.”
He said they are trying to expedite things, and that they are already far ahead where it would normally be from a logistical stand point.
“We are also gearing up and close to geared up because we have tremendous people in the military,” Trump added. “So, they’ll be able to deliver service very rapidly.”
US biotech company Moderna on Monday announced that its early-stage trial of a possible coronavirus vaccine had shown “positive interim” results by successfully eliciting COVID-19 antibodies in its first eight participants. Based on the results of the interim Phase 1 data, the company will advance its study to Phase 2. Moderna anticipates starting the final stage, or Phase 3 of its trial in July 2020.
Several other companies and organizations in the US and around the world have begun testing potential coronavirus vaccines in humans, including Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech; the University of Oxford in cooperation with AstraZeneca, and Chinese company CanSino.
As of Monday, the US has registered almost 1.5 million COVID-19 cases, leading the global tally, and has recorded at least 89,874 deaths from the disease, according to data presented by Johns Hopkins University.