Trump signs order to give Americans priority access to US COVID-19 vaccines

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that he said would ensure “American citizens have first priority” to receive COVID-19 vaccines procured by the U.S. government before assisting other countries. Trump said they would then “be working with other countries all over the world."
The Trump administration is confident it will have enough vaccines to inoculate everyone who wants a vaccine by the end of the second quarter of 2021, one official said Monday, disputing a New York Times story that said the government declined when Pfizer Inc. offered at the end of summer 2020 to sell more vaccine doses to the United States. 

It was unclear why an executive order was needed to ensure that the vaccines would be distributed first in the United States. When asked to explain the executive order in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday, the chief scientist of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, said "We feel that we can deliver the vaccines as needed. So I don’t know exactly what this order is about.” 

 

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