On Thursday, President Joe Biden claimed that the U.S. will have enough supply of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the summer to inoculate 300 million Americans.
Speaking at the National Institutes of Health complex just outside Washington as he visited some of the nation’s leading scientists on the frontlines of the fight against the disease, Biden toured the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory that created the COVID-19 vaccine now manufactured by Moderna and being rolled out in the U.S. and other countries. During the visit, Biden announced that the U.S. had secured contractual commitments from Moderna and Pfizer to deliver the 600 million doses of vaccine by the end of July — more than a month earlier than initially anticipated.
Source: Yahoo News Canada
“That’s just the floor,” Biden said during his address, “Our end goal is beating COVID-19. We’re now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” he announced. Speaking with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, Biden emphasized that his administration is doing everything possible to increase the vaccine supply and the country’s capacity to deliver injections into arms.
“It’s been a hell of a learning process,” Biden said. He also criticized President Donald Trump, saying he inherited “no plan to vaccinate most of the country. It is no secret that the vaccination program was in much worse shape than my team and I anticipated.”
Source: OregonLive.com
During the tour, Biden was shown the lab bench where researchers sequenced the virus and developed the precursor of the Moderna vaccine. The Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory is led by Dr. Barney Graham, whose team made critical discoveries years ago that laid the groundwork for rapid development of that and other COVID-19 vaccines. Before the pandemic erupted, one of Graham’s research fellows, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, had been using those earlier findings to develop a vaccine for MERS, a cousin of COVID-19.
Corbett and Graham had a head start when Chinese scientists shared the genetic map of the new coronavirus in January 2020. They already knew how to make spike proteins, which coat the surface of the new coronavirus and its MERS relative, that were stable enough to be used as a key vaccine ingredient. Within days, the NIH had sent instructions to Moderna to brew up doses, and Corbett and her colleagues were setting up the key lab and animal tests that would eventually prove they were on the right track.
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