Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released the following statement on the Democratic white paper on COVID-19 vaccines:
“The United States is developing safe and effective vaccines for a new virus faster than at any other time in our history. Democrats and Republicans should be working together to help further accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of new tests, treatments and vaccines, and I look forward to discussing these and other proposals with my colleagues.”
In other news, Chairman Alexander said that he disagrees with President Donald Trump's decision to terminate the United States’ membership in the World Health Organization (WHO):
“I disagree with the president’s decision. Certainly there needs to be a good, hard look at mistakes the World Health Organization might have made in connection with coronavirus, but the time to do that is after the crisis has been dealt with, not in the middle of it. Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need. And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States. If the administration has specific recommendations for reforms of the WHO, it should submit those recommendations to Congress, and we can work together to make those happen.”
