On Tuesday, White House officials moved to block new FDA guidelines which would make it harder to approval a coronavirus vaccine for emergency use. This comes as President Trump returns to the White House from his stint in Walter Reed Hospital over the weekend. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins The Final Round to discuss the latest on the coronavirus.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: All right, let’s turn our attention back now to everything going on with the coronavirus, specifically the current condition of the president, returning to the White House last night. Anjalee Khemlani joins us now for the latest on that. Anjalee.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thank you, Myles. Yes, we know that the president came back to the White House in grand form, stepping down from Marine One and up the stairs to the balcony of the White House, where he then greeted the cameras.
We do know that, since then, he’s been quarantined in a medical unit. And there has been concern and reports of concern throughout the White House about just how sort of antsy he might be getting, sitting in quarantine. We know the president likes to be pretty busy. So listen to what he has to say as soon as he came off Marine One back to the White House.
DONALD TRUMP: Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it. As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out front. I led.
Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a risk. There’s a danger, but that’s OK. And now I’m better, and maybe I’m immune– I don’t know.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: So as you can hear, the tone still carrying a lot of confidence. And that dangerous public health messaging that has gotten many health experts worried about not being afraid, as we discussed yesterday, about the virus.
But going forward, we’re still waiting to see what the contact tracing efforts do turn up in terms of, you know, who and where– who is affected and where individuals were, in fact, infected.
Meanwhile, you know, talks about the vaccine while the president is talking about being immune, he may well have antibodies at this point. But many Americans still don’t, and the FDA is looking to sort of expand its guidelines to two-month observation periods for phase 3 trials. It’s a topic we’ve discussed before.
But the White House is pushing back, saying that at the behest of the industry, they’re unlikely to be doing that and approving that. But the language about this is already out. The FDA advisory board slated to meet on October 22nd is going to be addressing this. And it should be coming up sort of in headlines then.
But even then, the White House can, in fact, push back and override that. At this point in time, it looks like the industry, at least some, are not saying that they are against that– Pfizer CEO tweeting earlier that he hasn’t had discussions with the White House, and he does, in fact, support the FDA and their efforts. So that’s something definitely to keep an eye on.
Meanwhile, talking about vaccines, the World Health Organization is saying that they will consider Chinese vaccines to distribute to the world. And that’s something that, of course, has been of concern.
China going ahead and distributing their vaccine internally, even to individuals despite not getting through their late stage trials, which is sort of exactly the conundrum we’re trying to avoid here in the US. So still waiting to hear whether or not they actually make it through. China right now, leading the world with vaccines for in late stage trials and already utilizing it within their population.
MYLES UDLAND: I just hope, Anjalee, that in four weeks plus one day, we can go back to talking about aggressive vaccine trials that aren’t explicitly politicized around an election that, by the way, has actually begun. Millions of people have already voted.
So I’m not exactly sure why we’re playing with this at this point. But so it goes. We’ve seen this coming for many months. All right, Anjalee, we’ll talk to you later on this week.
