Anthony Fauci, top US infectious disease expert, warned against rushing into the distribution of  COVID-19 vaccine before it has been proved safe and effective in large trials, is a bad idea. Talking to news agency Reuters, Fauci said there are risks if the vaccine is rushed, despite there are urgent needs of it.

Health experts have expressed their concerns that US President Donald Trump will apply pressure on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to deliver a vaccine before US Elections, to boost his chances of spending another four years at the White House.

“The one thing that you would not want to see with a vaccine is getting a EUA (emergency use authorisation) before you have a signal of efficacy,” the top US infectious disease expert told Reuters.

He said that one of the potential dangers of rushing into the premature production of a vaccine is that it ‘would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the other vaccines to enroll people in their trial.’

Many pharmaceuticals companies, who are leading vaccine candidates, launched large-scale clinical trials last week, aiming to enroll tens of thousands of volunteers. Johnson and Johnson said last week that it hopes to include 60,000 subjects in the Phase III trial of its coronavirus vaccine.

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The US President on Sunday announced emergency use authorisation for plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to treat current patients. The World Health Organization (WHO) still considers convalescent plasma therapy to be experimental and said it should continue to be evaluated.

Trump on Saturday had tweeted that “‘deep state’ elements at the FDA is making it difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics.” He said the FDA is hoping to delay the vaccine until after November 3, the day Trump faces his Democrat counterpart, Joe Biden.

Trump wrote, “Must focus on speed and saving lives!”