WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump vowed to defeat the coronavirus by “unleashing American scientific genius” as he toured a Covid-19 vaccine facility in the swing state of North Carolina on Monday.
Trump appears to have pinned his hopes on the swift emergence of a successful vaccine to both contain the country’s still raging epidemic and revive his faltering re-election hopes.
“We will achieve a victory over the virus by unleashing American scientific genius,” he told reporters at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, hours after it was revealed national security advisor Robert O’Brien had tested positive.
The facility has been awarded a contract to mass produce an experimental vaccine developed by Novavax, as part of a multi-billion dollar government initiative dubbed Operation Warp Speed.
The plan involves investing heavily in leading pharmaceuticals to aid their development and manufacturing efforts, with the goal of delivering 300 million doses of vaccine by January 2021.
It’s “never been done before, but we suspect it’s going to work, and work very well,” added Trump, who later donned a black mask and toured the lab.
The United States is by far the worst-hit country in the