President Donald Trump says Covid vaccine will not be available in New York because the U.S. government will not deliver to them.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately,” Trump announced during a press conference from the White House Rose Garden.
“He doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” Trump stressed. “These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so, and that pains me to say that.”
Responding to Trump's remarks, Cuomo said, “None of what [Trump] said is true. Surprise, surprise.”
“I have been an outspoken opponent to many of Trump’s policies over the last four years,” he said, pointing out that Trump lost in New York in the U.S. presidential election by “huge margin” and state prosecutors are also probing the president for tax fraud.
“So, he has issues with New York and he likes to point to New York,” Cuomo stressed. “But this is his issue. It’s his credibility issue. It’s the fear that he politicized the health process of this nation, which is a well-founded fear.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement threatening to file a lawsuit against Trump if a Covid vaccine is not delivered to the state once available. “This is nothing more than vindictive behavior by a lame-duck president trying to extract vengeance on those who oppose his politics,” James said.
Meanwhile, a senior advisor to Cuomo said on Twitter that the governor “is fighting to ensure the communities hit hardest by COVID get the vaccine.” Trump “has failed with his pandemic response, lied to Americans about how bad it was when he knew otherwise & was fired by voters for his incompetence,” Rich Azzopardi noted.
Independent assessment
Cuomo previously said that New York would independently assess the vaccines after many asked whether the White House was trying to rush the approval process ahead of the U.S. elections
“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion,” Cuomo said in a statement.
The U.S. has reported more than 150,000 new cases Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average of daily new infections is now at 131,445, which is 32% higher than a week ago, based on a CNBC analysis of Hopkins data.
According to Pfizer, the Covid-19 vaccine it produced with German drugmaker BioNTech was 90% effective in a late-stage trial. Pfizer explained that its analysis involved 94 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 43,538 respondents. The case split between vaccinated patients and those who took a placebo showed a vaccine efficacy rate of above 90% at seven days after the second of Pfizer's two-dose vaccine.
On Friday, Trump mentioned that it was an “unfortunate mistake” when Pfizer said earlier this week that it was not part of Operation Warp Speed. While Pfizer secured a deal with the U.S. government for vaccine doses in July, the company had been developing a vaccine for Covid-19 long before.
Trump said his administration would “secure” an emergency use authorization for Pfizer. He called the vaccine a “great” and “safe” vaccine, even though Pfizer must present more phase three trial safety data.
“It’ll be approved very, very quickly,” he said. “The vaccine will be distributed to front-line workers, the elderly and high-risk Americans immediately. It’ll be a matter of weeks. Get out very, very much ahead of schedule.”
