President Trump disputes health officials, sees mass vaccinations soon

WASHINGTON — Open­ly con­tra­dict­ing the government’s top health experts, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump pre­dict­ed on Wednes­day that a safe and effec­tive vac­cine against the coro­n­avirus could be ready as ear­ly as next month and in mass dis­tri­b­u­tion soon after, under­min­ing the direc­tor of the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion and call­ing him “con­fused” in pro­ject­ing a longer time frame.

Trump also dis­agreed with Dr. Robert Red­field about the effec­tive­ness of pro­tec­tive masks — which the pres­i­dent rec­om­mends but almost nev­er wears — and said he’d tele­phoned Red­field to tell him so.

Ear­li­er in the day, the CDC sent all 50 states a “play­book” for dis­tri­b­u­tion of a vac­cine to all Amer­i­cans free of cost when one is proven safe and effec­tive — which is not yet the case. Red­field told a con­gres­sion­al hear­ing that health care work­ers, first respon­ders and oth­ers at high risk would get the vac­cine first, per­haps in Jan­u­ary or even late this year, but it was unlike­ly to be avail­able more broad­ly, again assum­ing approval, before late spring or summer.

Red­field, masked at times in a Sen­ate hear­ing room, spoke emphat­i­cal­ly of the impor­tance of every­one wear­ing pro­tec­tive masks to stop the pan­dem­ic, which has killed near­ly 200,000 Americans.

“I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guar­an­teed to pro­tect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.”

Trump, who has strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed all year that restau­rants, stores and cities in gen­er­al “reopen,” men­tioned on Tues­day that wait­ers have strug­gled with their face cov­er­ings and do not like them.

As for vac­ci­na­tions, Trump said Wednes­day, “We think we can start some time in Octo­ber.” One of his recent­ly added advis­ers, Dr. Scott Atlas, said as many as 700 mil­lion dos­es could be avail­able by the end of March.

Trump made the pre­dic­tion even though the vac­cine is still being test­ed in human sub­jects, and some health experts have said they believe a safe and high­ly effec­tive vac­cine is sev­er­al months way, if not much longer.

CDC sent a plan­ning doc­u­ment on Wednes­day to U.S. states, ter­ri­to­ries and some big cities. Adding to logis­ti­cal com­pli­ca­tions, vac­cines like­ly will have to be giv­en in two dos­es spaced weeks apart and will have to be refrigerated.

Red­field said states are not ready to deal with the demand for such a dis­tri­b­u­tion and some $6 bil­lion in new fund­ing would be need­ed to get the nation prepared.

Unswayed, Trump said, “We’re ready to move, and I think it will be full distribution.”

Red­field said any vac­cine avail­able in Novem­ber or Decem­ber would be in “very lim­it­ed sup­ply,” and reserved for first respon­ders and peo­ple most vul­ner­a­ble to COVID-19. The shot wouldn’t be broad­ly avail­able until the spring or sum­mer of 2021, he estimated.

The entire vac­cine enter­prise faces con­tin­ued pub­lic skep­ti­cism. Only about half of Amer­i­cans said they’d get vac­ci­nat­ed in an Asso­ci­at­ed Press-NORC poll tak­en in May. Since then, ques­tions have only mount­ed about whether the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to rush treat­ments and vac­cines to help Trump’s reelec­tion chances.

The Health and Human Ser­vices Depart­ment announced Wednes­day that polit­i­cal appointee Michael Caputo would take a leave of absence to “focus on his health and the well-being of his fam­i­ly.” The news fol­lowed rev­e­la­tions that Caputo had tried to gain edi­to­r­i­al con­trol over the CDC’s sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions on COVID-19, which he con­tend­ed were hurt­ing the Trump administration.

Red­field said that the “sci­en­tif­ic integri­ty” of his agency’s reports “has not been com­pro­mised and it will not be com­pro­mised under my .” He also reject­ed ques­tions about whether the CDC’s time­line for states to be ready for a vac­cine by Nov. 1 was polit­i­cal­ly motivated.

“The worst thing that could hap­pen is if we have a vac­cine deliv­ered and we’re still not ready to dis­trib­ute,” Red­field told Sen­ate law­mak­ers. “There was absolute­ly no polit­i­cal think­ing about it.”

Sen. Pat­ty Mur­ray of Wash­ing­ton, the committee’s top Demo­c­rat, said polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence from HHS had dam­aged pub­lic trust in the government’s health information.

“The Trump admin­is­tra­tion needs to leave the sci­ence to the sci­en­tists imme­di­ate­ly,” Mur­ray said.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden said while cam­paign­ing that he trusts what sci­en­tists say about a poten­tial vac­cine — but not Trump.

Biden has said he would take a vac­cine “tomor­row” if it were avail­able but he would want to “see what the sci­en­tists said” first.

As for the planned vac­cine cam­paign, Red­field said that his agency will be work­ing with state health offi­cials to imple­ment the prepa­ra­tions in com­ing days.

Among the high­lights of the plan:

— For most vac­cines, peo­ple will need two dos­es, 21 to 28 days apart. Dou­ble-dose vac­cines will have to come from the same drug­mak­er. There could be sev­er­al vac­cines from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers approved and available.

— Vac­ci­na­tion of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion won’t be a sprint but a marathon. Ini­tial­ly there may be a lim­it­ed sup­ply of vac­cines, and the focus will be on pro­tect­ing health work­ers, oth­er essen­tial employ­ees, and peo­ple in vul­ner­a­ble groups. A sec­ond and third phase would expand vac­ci­na­tion to the entire population.

— The vac­cine itself will be free of charge, thanks to bil­lions of dol­lars in tax­pay­er fund­ing approved by Con­gress and allo­cat­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. The goal is that patients won’t be sep­a­rate­ly charged for admin­is­tra­tion of their shots, and offi­cials say they are work­ing to ensure that’s the case for all Medicare recip­i­ents and unin­sured peo­ple as well those cov­ered by insur­ance at their jobs.

— States and local com­mu­ni­ties will need to devise pre­cise plans for receiv­ing and local­ly dis­trib­ut­ing vac­cines, some of which will require spe­cial han­dling such as refrig­er­a­tion or freez­ing. States and cities have a month to sub­mit plans.

— A mas­sive infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy effort will be need­ed to track who is get­ting which vac­cines and when, and the key chal­lenge involves get­ting mul­ti­ple pub­lic and pri­vate data­bas­es to link with each other.

Some of the broad com­po­nents of the fed­er­al plan have already been dis­cussed, but Wednesday’s reports attempt to put the key details into a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work. Dis­tri­b­u­tion is under the umbrel­la of Oper­a­tion Warp Speed, a White House-backed ini­tia­tive to have vac­cines ready to ship in 24 hours from when a ver­sion is giv­en emer­gency use approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

___

Sto­bbe report­ed from Atlanta. AP Writer Alexan­dra Jaffe con­tributed to this report.

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