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.
“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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