President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. government would not deliver a coronavirus vaccine to New York if and when one is available.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately,” Trump said during a press conference from the White House Rose garden.
Cuomo’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s comments were his first in-person remarks since NBC News and other news outlets projected over the weekend that Joe Biden won the presidential election.
Over the past week, the U.S. coronavirus outbreak has worsened, with the nation reporting more than 150,000 new infections Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average of daily new cases stands at 131,445, 32% higher than a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Hopkins data.
On Monday, Pfizer said that the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with German drugmaker BioNTech was 90% effective in a late-stage trial. Pfizer said its analysis evaluated 94 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 43,538 participants. It said the case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received a placebo indicated a vaccine efficacy rate of above 90% at seven days after the second of the company’s two-dose vaccine.
Trump said Friday that it was an “unfortunate mistake” when Pfizer claimed earlier this week that it wasn’t part of Operation Warp Speed. While Pfizer did strike a deal with the U.S. government for vaccine doses in July, the company had been working on a vaccine for the coronavirus long before.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
