MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Did FDA hold back Covid-19 vaccine approval to stop Trump's win? Pfizer says 'we will move with speed of science'

'Trump took credit for President Obama’s economic recovery. It’s time for some karma when it comes to the coronavirus vaccine,' a user commented

President Donald Trump who seems to be quite furious after the election results came in, as he lost the Presidency battle to Democratic candidate Joe Biden has now accused the FDA of deliberately not announcing the approval of a breakthrough Covid-19 vaccine until after the election, to prevent him from getting re-elected. Now, Pfizer's CEO has revealed that he would've released the vaccine data before elections if "it was possible".

In an interview with Axios, Dr. Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer revealed "One or two days after the first presidential debate, I wrote a letter to our employees and I said that some people want us to do it faster, some people want us to do it slower. I'm telling to all of you that we will move with the speed of science. So if it was before, I would have released it before. If it is now, I’ll release them now. I learned about those results yesterday, Sunday, at 2:00. And the independent experts’ committee, independent from Pfizer, that unblinded the data and reviewed, they met at 11 and they finished their meeting at 1:30."

The statement came before, Trump launched a series of tweets on Twitter claiming that all this, is a part of the controversy against him.

"The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!" President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday, November 9, blaming the Food and Drug Administration - and the Democrats - for not announcing the news sooner. 

The fury came after Pfizer announced early data from the Covid-19 vaccine trial showed that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective on Monday morning. In another tweet, Trump alleged a vaccine under Joe Biden would take four years. "If Joe Biden were President, you wouldn’t have the Vaccine for another four years, nor would the @US_FDA have ever approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives!

In an earlier tweet he wrote, "As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!"