President Donald Trump will resume the White House’s coronavirus task force briefings, starting Tuesday.
The president made the announcement in the Oval Office on Monday as the race for a coronavirus vaccine heats up. The daily briefings were a staple of the administration’s response to the pandemic throughout March and April and often featured White House coronavirus task force doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. (RELATED: Cuomo Refers To Wuhan Coronavirus As The ‘European Virus’)
“We’re going to give you a lot of briefings in the next week and over the next few weeks,” Trump said. “I think I’m gonna bring some of the great companies that are working and very successfully in the past have worked on these things.”
“We think we’re doing very well in that regard,” the president added with regards to the development of a vaccine and therapeutics. “I really feel certain, I guess you can never use totally certain, but pretty damn certain that they’re gonna have the vaccine, they’re gonna have therapeutics, and it’s going to start taking place very shortly, and that will be a great thing. For the world, that will be a great thing.”
Pres. Trump announces that coronavirus task force briefings will reconvene and says that some of the “great companies” working on the COVID-19 vaccine will join the briefings. https://t.co/Q4GDITXeni pic.twitter.com/TTrsSYSaY1
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 20, 2020
The University of Oxford announced Monday that early vaccine trials have yielded positive results, and could be ready for distribution by the end of the year. Moderna also reported earlier in July that they were ready to begin a new phase of testing for its coronavirus vaccine after initial trials showed “robust” results in patients.
The resumption of the briefings come as cases surge in states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona. The U.S. recently recorded a record number of positive coronavirus tests, although the death rate is still reportedly below its peak in April.