The White House is set to announce progress on developing COVID-19 vaccines this week, according to U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, chairman of a key Senate Health and Human Services budget committee.
He says it will be a handful of candidates — out of a few thousand — to have federal support to develop a sought-after immunization to the virus strain that has to date killed more than 386,000 people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Blunt says there will be failures in the development of the vaccine, but “if some of them don’t work out, we’re not trying hard enough.’ His “shark tank” approach funds many labs in the race to slow and stop COVID-19. Pharma companies like Great Britain’s AstraZeneca are pledging to send a vaccine to the U.S. as early as this fall.
Blunt says in the U.S. government’s public-private partnership with drug companies, the outcome must be “available to people at a price they can afford.”
Listen to details in Missourinet’s Ashley Byrd’s interview with Blunt: (3:03)