WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 13: In response to the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump announces that he is declaring a national emergency during news conference with National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci (2nd from L), Vice President Mike Pence and other members of his coronavirus task force and leaders from the healthcare industry in the Rose Garden at the White House March 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Getty)
President Donald Trump said the U.S. will reopen, “vaccine or no vaccine,” as he announced a plan to have a vaccine by the end of the year.
The president compared the vaccine project, which he named “Operation Warp Speed,” to the efforts made in World War II to produce the first nuclear weapon.
Trump stressed that, even without a vaccine, Americans should return to their lives as normal.
The president said on Friday that the project would begin studying 14 promising vaccines.
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“That means big and it means fast,” he said of Operation Warp Speed. “A massive scientific, industrial and logistical endeavor unlike anything our country has seen since the Manhattan Project.”
Trump announced that Moncef Slaoui, who previously led the vaccines division at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, will lead the project. Gen. Gustave Perna, who oversees distribution for the U.S. Army, will serve as chief operating officer.
Slaoui said he was “confident” that a “few hundred million doses of vaccine” would be delivered by the end of the year.
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