'There will be no shortcuts': Health officials insist they won't let election sway speed of coronavirus vaccine rollout

‘Science and science alone will be the way in which this decision is made,’ National Institutes of Health director says

Senior US health officials sought to assure Americans at a high-profile Senate hearing on Wednesday that the government will only roll out a vaccine for the coronavirus when it is proven to be safe and effective.

"Science and science alone will be the way in which this decision is made, otherwise I'll have no part in it," National Institutes of Health Director Francis S Collins said in response to a question from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Mr Collins and US Surgeon General Jerome Adams delivered their testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as scores of Americans remain skeptical about Donald Trump’s perceived politicization of the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the vaccine approval process, and conspiracy theories about potential vaccine side effects.

"There will be no shortcuts. This vaccine will be safe, it will be effective, or it won't be moved along," Mr Adams said.

“And when a vaccine is either approved or authorized by the FDA, I and my family will be in line to get it,” Mr Adams said.

Mr Collins used the bulk of his opening statement to explain how vaccines work and how they are produced, using charts and illustrations on a Powerpoint presentation almost as if he were a high school science teacher.

“You have a biotech company inside your body,” Mr Collins said, explaining how once the human body’s immune system is introduced to a certain viral disease component — such as “spike protein” associated with Covid-19 — it creates antibodies to attack that kind of protein.

It usually takes several days to a couple weeks for a person’s immune system to pump out those antibodies, but once they have been produced, the body never forgets how to make them.

So if a person is exposed to the actual Covid-19 strain, their body can quickly re-deploy those same antibodies to eradicate it.

“It may take a week or two for your factory to make a new product, but it keeps the blueprint on file for any antibody it's ever made,” Mr Collins explained.

While Mr Collins said he maintains “cautious optimism” there will be a successful vaccine candidate by the end of the year, he stressed that Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s attempt to significantly reduce the timeline for publicly rolling out a successful vaccine, “aims to deliver up to 300 million doses of a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 in early 2021.”

That is still the projected timeline,  Mr Collins testified.

It would be an unprecedented feat of science and health logistics to get hundreds of millions of US citizens inoculated by next spring, health officials have said.

The US government has committed billions of dollars into widespread manufacturing of vaccine candidates that have not yet been proven safe or effective so that if they are approved, Americans can receive them en masse right away. If a vaccine candidate is deemed ineffective, doses will be destroyed.

Six vaccine candidates are currently being tested for their effectiveness, including three that are already being tested on humans.

Senate Democrats sought assurances from Mr Collins and Mr Adams about the safety of a future vaccine after Donald Trump last month accused “deep state” officials at the Food and Drug Administration of intentionally holding up vaccine testing until after the 3 November presidential election to hamper his election odds.

"We need vaccine confidence, and political interference can be a huge detriment to that. So can misinformation," said Senate HELP Committee ranking member Patty Murray of Washington.

The president has provided no proof for his claims.

"The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics," Mr Trump tweeted in August.

"Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!" the president wrote.