President Donald Trump on Friday touted the success of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private project to develop and speed up the production of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, and said his administration would not, under any circumstances, go into a lockdown.
The president also said a vaccine would be available to everyone by April except residents in New York state where the governor has decided not to help with that “for political reasons.”
"This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the -- the, whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell -- I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown," Trump said during a press conference from the Rose Garden, his first appearance in more than a week he addressed the White House press corps.
"Lockdowns cost lives. And they cost a lot of problems. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself."
His announcement comes as Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and member of Joe Biden's coronavirus pandemic task force, told Yahoo! Finance that it was worth considering a four to six week lockdown of the entire country and that the government could pay workers and small business owners to stay at home to stop the spread of the virus.
Trump said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, "doesn’t trust where this vaccine is coming from. … He doesn’t trust that its coming from this White House administration. The governor will let us know when he’s ready."
"He’s had some bad editorials recently. … I hope he doesn’t handle this as badly as he handled the nursing homes."
The president also criticized Pfizer for distancing itself from the Warp Speed initiative after Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said, “We were never part of the Warp Speed,” adding, “we have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”
"Pfizer said it wasn’t part of Warp Speed, but that turned out to be an unfortunate misrepresentation on their part," Trump said. "That’s why we gave them the $1.95 billion dollars and it was an unfortunate mistake when they said that."
A spokeswoman for Pfizer on Monday clarified that the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine.
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