White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Thursday insisted the Trump administration has been making "great progress" with the growing coronavirus pandemic through therapeutics and said millions of units of a vaccine are expected to be deployed in upcoming weeks.
"We're extremely encouraged by the progress that two particular companies have been making as it relates to vaccines," Meadows said on "CBS This Morning." "Some 100 million vials of those vaccines, we expect to be deployed within the next 60 days. And so as we look at that, we do believe that we're rounding the corner in terms of the approval."
Meadows' comments come days after he came under fire for telling CNN that the administration's focus had moved to mitigation and that "we're not going to control the pandemic."
On Thursday, Meadows pointed out that Europe is seeing a surge that is higher than what's being experienced in the United States, so it's hoped that the efforts underway here "will allow us to return to normal in the upcoming months."
The administration is also "without a doubt" encouraging protective measures to continue, and encouraging them in the White House, which has been hit with several cases, including President Donald Trump, he added.
"I can tell you that I probably have used more Purell than any American here in the United States over the last 7 or 8 months," said Meadows. "It's an unusual environment that we have. And so as we try to make sure that we come into contact with other people, making sure that we socially distance as much as possible, wearing those masks when we can't, we strongly encourage that."
He also insisted that further lockdown measures will not work to slow the current coronavirus growth.
"It didn't work in Europe, and we're seeing a greater outbreak," said Meadows. "Now that they're opening things up, they're actually over 100,000 cases in Europe."
He also disagreed with a recent editorial letter from the New England Journal of Medicine criticizing the administration's response.
"What we have been able to do is see that the death rate continued to go down, and we will not stop," he said.
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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