Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Thursday rejected concerns that the Trump administration is rushing the approval of a coronavirus vaccine in the run-up to Election Day, after the CDC directed states to prepare to begin vaccine distribution by Nov. 1.
“I think it’s very irresponsible how people are trying to politicize notions of delivering a vaccine to the American people,” Azar told “CBS This Morning” in an interview.
“Any vaccine that comes out is going to meet FDA’s gold standards for authorization or licensure,” he added. “The president’s made that clear. I’ve made that clear. The FDA commissioner has made that clear.”
The secretary’s remarks come as three vaccine candidates produced by drugmakers AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTec have entered late-stage Phase 3 clinical trials.
Although Azar said it was unclear when the data from those studies would be reported, he argued that “if we get a vaccine, we need to be ready to distribute that.”
CDC Director Robert Redfield wrote in a letter to governors last week that federal health officials “are rapidly making preparations to implement large-scale distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines in the fall of 2020.”
He “urgently” asked states to assemble a “fully operational” plan for providing vaccines to the public by Nov. 1 — two days before the election — and he promised that any preparations “will not compromise the safety or integrity of the products being distributed.”
Pressed on how the CDC selected its target date, Azar denied that the decision was politically motivated and deferred to Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the agency’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“You’d have to ask Dr. Messonnier, because that came out of the career people at CDC working to do the planning here,” he said. “It has nothing to do with elections.”
The potential vaccines’ Phase 3 trials can take months to complete, and definitive results about the candidates’ efficacy are not expected until late October at the earliest. Nevertheless, the White House’s rhetoric on vaccines has become increasingly optimistic.
Vice President Mike Pence said at last week’s Republican National Convention that the United States was “on track to have the world’s first safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year.”
President Donald Trump made an even more definitive prediction in his nomination acceptance speech, saying the administration “will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.”
