August 12 coronavirus news

By Nectar Gan, Adam Renton, Melissa Macaya, Meg Wagner and Mike Hayes, CNN

Updated 2124 GMT (0524 HKT) August 13, 2020

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11:06 p.m. ET, August 11, 2020

Fauci says he seriously doubts Russia has proven new vaccine is safe and effective

From CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 31. Kevin Dietsch/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US' top infectious disease expert, said he seriously doubts Russia has proven its coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective after Moscow said it had approved a drug for use Tuesday.

“I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective. I seriously doubt that they've done that,” Fauci told Deborah Roberts of ABC News for a National Geographic event to broadcast Thursday. A portion of the interview was posted by National Geographic on Tuesday.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that having a vaccine and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective are two different things.

“We have half a dozen or more vaccines,” Fauci said. “So if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn't work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to. But that's not the way it works.”

Fauci said that if and when Americans hear announcements from countries like Russia or China about vaccine development, they have to remember that the United States has certain safety and efficacy standards in place. Makers of the Russian vaccine have not yet released any data from human trials.

The US Food and Drug Administration has said that it will only approve a vaccine if it meets a 50% efficacy requirement.

In a statement emailed Tuesday, the World Health Organization said it is in touch with Russian scientists and authorities and looks forward to reviewing details of the trials. According to WHO, there are 28 vaccines in human trials around the world.

11:05 p.m. ET, August 11, 2020

Trump tries to make the case the US is doing better than Europe

From CNN's Nikki Carvajal

US President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, on Tuesday, August 11 in Washington. Andrew Harnik/AP

US President Donald Trump cited misleading statistics about coronavirus cases in Europe during a news briefing Tuesday, claiming inaccurately that the United States is currently handling the pandemic better than other countries.

“Since the end of July, the seven-day average for cases in the United States has fallen by nearly 20%, but the virus continues to increase in nations across the globe,” the President claimed, speaking before taking questions. “Last week, France and Germany both recorded their highest daily number of new cases in three months.”
“Not that I want to bring that up,” he added, “but might as well explain it to the media.”
“The seven-day case average for Germany has increased by 62% since last week, unfortunately, and that is truly unfortunate. It’s increased 82% in France, 113% in Spain, and 30% in the United Kingdom. Those are big increases. Cases are also rapidly increasing in the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovakia, Estonia and other European counties. And in our country, they’re going down. We will be seeing that even more rapidly as time goes by, short time,” the President claimed.

It’s true that cases are rapidly rising in Europe, but the numbers are nowhere near the level of infection in the United States.

The US added 49,536 new cases on Monday, a day that consistently sees lower numbers. The US is averaging 54,409 new cases over the past seven days, which is up slightly from the previous few days.

However, the percentage change from the prior week in cases is down 10%, not 20% as the President claimed. This is also slightly lower than last week, when the US dipped down 16% compared to the prior week in this metric, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.

10:59 p.m. ET, August 11, 2020

US government strikes deal with Moderna for 100 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine

From CNN's Jen Christensen

Moderna Inc. headquarters located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday, May 25. Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Trump administration has reached a $1.525 billion deal with Moderna Inc. to manufacture and deliver 100 million doses of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine once it is approved, according to a news release from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

President Donald Trump announced the deal during a media briefing on Tuesday.

Moderna is one of several companies manufacturing the vaccine “at risk,” as the industry calls it, meaning the company is currently making the vaccine before it is approved. Clinical trials are currently underway to test whether it’s safe and effective.

Under this contract, worth up to $1.525 billion for 100 million doses, the doses would be owned by the US government and distributed and used as part of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign. If the doses are used, they would be provided to Americans at no cost. The government can also acquire up to an additional 400 million doses of this vaccine.

The vaccine, called mRNA-1273, was developed by Moderna in collaboration with the US government. It had development help from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the US Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority (BARDA) supported late stage clinical trials and has helped scale up manufacturing. Moderna’s advanced stage clinical trial, which started July 27, is the first government-funded Phase 3 clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine in the US.

This contract is a part of the US government’s Operation Warp Speed, the federal push to get vaccines and therapeutics to market as soon as safely possible. HHS said the goal is to get effective vaccines to the American people by the end of the year.

The government also reached a deal with Pfizer in July to produce 100 million doses of its vaccine. In August it agreed a similar deal for 100 million doses with Janssen, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine arm, for its vaccine candidate. It has other deals with GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Novavax and AstraZeneca.

There are 28 Covid-19 vaccines in human trials, according to the World Health Organization.

“In creating a vaccine portfolio for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump Administration is increasing the likelihood that the United States will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in Tuesday’s news release. “Today’s investment represents the next step in supporting this vaccine candidate all the way from early development by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, through clinical trials, and now large-scale manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people.”