Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar Wednesday rejected claims that President Donald Trump put pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the use of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19, insisting that the president is removing "unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that stands in the way of saving lives."
"This is a global, unprecedented pandemic," Azar said on the "Fox News Rundown" podcast. "We have got to move as quickly as possible. Our normal timelines just can't hold. We've got to move fast."
Azar said the data about convalescent plasma came in over the course of last week and was being analyzed by the National Institutes of Health and the FDA, and as of last Friday, "we were preparing rollout materials for an authorization on Sunday. So that was already well underway."
However, after Trump announced the emergency authorization Sunday, some media outlets promoted the theory that the president has pushed health officials to approve it before the November election.
Trump's announcement came a day after he accused the "deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics."
Azar, however, when asked directly if Trump's deep state claim was true, said "no," but he added that the president is "insisting on, what I insist on, is that we move as quickly as we can to meet the FDA safety, efficacy and regulatory standards, whether it's therapeutics or vaccines."
With Operation Warp Speed, he added, the government is working to "reduce any inefficiency, get rid of any unnecessary bureaucratic red tape to move with speed because people's lives are at risk."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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