Trump adviser hopes US regulator will okay vaccines by next week

A leader of the Trump administration’s effort to produce and distribute a coronavirus vaccine says he expects the Food and Drug Administration to soon authorize the use of a vaccine.

Operation Warp Speed chief science adviser Moncef Slaoui says he hopes by Dec. 10 or 11, a Pfizer vaccine is approved in the US.

Slaoui tells ABC’s “Good Morning America” he “would expect the FDA to reach a similar conclusion” as British authorities did by approving emergency use of a vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Slaoui is urging people to listen to the experts about taking the vaccine, look at the data and keep their minds open. He says “great science” allowed researchers to do discovery work “in weeks rather than in years.”

Slaoui calls the vaccine “an insurance against this virus” and says it’s “what will get us out of this pandemic.”

— AP