Years of research laid groundwork for speedy vaccine; Millions of Americans turn to food banks for 1st time
How could scientists race out COVID-19 vaccines so fast without cutting corners? A head start helped — over a decade of behind-the-scenes research that had new vaccine technology poised for a challenge just as the coronavirus erupted.
“The speed is a reflection of years of work that went before,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press. “That’s what the public has to understand.”
Creating vaccines and having results from rigorous studies less than a year after the world discovered a never-before-seen disease is incredible, cutting years off normal development. But the two U.S. frontrunners are made in a way that promises speedier development may become the norm — especially if they prove to work long-term as well as early testing suggests.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is aiming to instill public confidence as well as claim major credit for the forthcoming coronavirus vaccines with a White House summit on Tuesday featuring experts who will outline distribution plans in detail.
Officials from President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team are not invited, even though they will oversee the continuation of the largest vaccination program in the nation’s history once he takes office on Jan. 20.
President Donald Trump is trying to frame vaccine development as a key component of his legacy.
The “Operation Warp Speed” summit will feature Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a host of government experts, state leaders and business executives, as the White House looks to explain that the vaccine is safe and lay out the administration’s plans to bring it to the American people.
Officials from the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines also were not expected to attend, according to people familiar with the matter.
In other developments:
- Lawmakers are giving themselves more time to sort through their end-of-session business on government spending and COVID-19 relief, preparing a one-week stopgap spending bill that would prevent a shutdown this weekend.
- As a year marked by coronavirus nears an end, millions of Americans are depending on food banks to stave off hunger, many of them for the first time.
- President-elect Joe Biden’s choices for his health care team point to a stronger federal role in the nation’s COVID-19 strategy, restoration of a guiding stress on science and an emphasis on equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments.
- In an illustration of rampant staff shortages in rural America, a Kansas hospital has been running dangerously short of medical workers. A doctor and physician’s assistant contracted the virus in November, and an X-ray technician was living out of an RV in the parking lot so he could be on site with co-workers out sick.
- President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is in the hospital with the virus, but the president says he’s doing well. The former New York mayor has been traveling the country — often without a mask — in trying to subvert the president’s loss.
- School systems around the U.S. are involved in a stop-and-start process of in-person learning. The retreat in some places and the push forward in others are happening as the virus comes back with a vengeance across much of the U.S.
- The World Health Organization has an unwelcome but potentially life-saving message for the holiday season: Don’t hug.
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