US President Donald Trump vowed to defeat the coronavirus by "unleashing American scientific genius" as he toured a COVID-19 vaccine facility in North Carolina state yesterday. We will achieve a victory over the virus by unleashing American scientific genius, he told reporters at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville.
The facility has been awarded a contract to mass produce an experimental vaccine developed by Novavax, as part of a multi-billion dollar government initiative dubbed
Operation Warp Speed. The plan involves investing heavily in leading pharmaceuticals to aid their development and manufacturing efforts, with the goal of delivering 300 million doses of vaccine by January 2021.
It's "never been done before, but we suspect it's going to work, and work very well," added Trump. The United States is by far the worst-hit country in the world, with more than 4.2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 150,000 deaths.