Shaheen Questions Officials on Trump Admin’s Plan to Develop & Distribute Safe & Effective Vaccine

Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, questioned Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Gary Disbrow, Acting Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to develop, manufacture and deliver 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021. The hearing comes as the public health crisis worsens across the U.S., with the country reaching a new record of 50,000 COVID-19 cases in a day this Wednesday, and as the death toll continues to rise. During the hearing, Shaheen questioned the witnesses on how the administration will ramp up the domestic supply chain in order to deliver an eventual vaccine, whether there is a potential link between PFAS exposure and COVID-19 and what steps the administration will take to fairly prioritize and distribute a vaccine to the American people, particularly to those most vulnerable to the disease, such as nursing home residents. In New Hampshire, nursing home residents account for approximately 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths, the highest nursing home death rate in the country.