Coronavirus Updates: Whistleblower Says COVID-19 Vaccine Unlikely in 18 Months – The Weather Channel

A whistleblower who was ousted as head of a federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, told a U.S. House committee on Thursday he doesn't think a vaccine can be ready as quickly as some in the Trump administration have suggested.

A lot of optimism is swirling around a 12 to 18 month timeframe, if everything goes perfectly, said Dr. Rick Bright, who was director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in the Department of Health and Human Services. Weve never seen everything go perfectly. My concern is that if we rush too quickly, and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine.

In prepared testimony to a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Bright said, Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities.

He said the country faces the darkest winter in modern history if the administration does not act.

Bright has said he was removed from BARDA after he objected to the wide distribution of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine that President Donald Trump had promoted as a treatment for COVID-19, the New York Times reported.

Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing to discuss protecting scientific integrity in response to the coronavirus outbreak on Thursday, May 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

At the hearing Thursday, Bright said, There were some attempts to bypass that rigorous vetting process that caused me great concern.

Before Bright testified, Trump tweeted that he had never met or even heard of Bright. But to me he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government, he tweeted.

In a statement Thursday, HHS said Bright had pushed for quick and serious consideration of hydroxychloroquine, celebrated acquisitions of the drug, and considered chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine possible treatments for COVID-19, the Washington Post reported. The department also criticized him for not taking the new position he was assigned at the National Institutes of Health.

Bright also testified that his superiors were indifferent to his warnings about scarce supplies. He said he pushed warnings from mask manufacturer Mike Bowen that N95 mask supplies were decimated to the highest levels of HHS.

From that moment, I knew that we were going to have a crisis for our health-care workers because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball," Bright said. "That was the last window of opportunity to turn on that production, to save the lives of those health-care workers, and we didnt act.

Nearly 85,000 people in the United States have died because of COVID-19, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.4 million coronavirus infections have been confirmed in the U.S. Worldwide, there have been more than 4.4 million confirmed infections, and over 300,000 people have died.

United States:

-Fourteen testing sites in Florida will be closed from Friday to Monday due to a threat of high winds, the state Department of Health announced Thursday. The 10 drive-thru and 4 walk-up sites are located in Volusia, Brevard, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The gusty weather is forecast to come from a low pressure system that could become the first named storm of the year. The system has already dropped several inches of rain in the Florida Keys, but isn't expected to have major impacts on land.

-New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced the Jersey Shore will be reopened in time for Memorial Day weekend. Shore towns must set occupancy limits, require 6 feet of space between beachgoers except family members or couples, and prohibit groups of 10 or more from congregating on the beach. Showers, changing pavilions and rest rooms should be open, but amusement rides and arcades will remain closed and beach fireworks are prohibited.

-Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the two Florida counties most affected by the coronavirus outbreak, can start reopening under phase one of the state's reopening plan starting Monday.

-The Mall of America, the largest shopping and entertainment complex in North America, will partially reopen June 1, mall management announced. The mall, which is in Bloomington, Minnesota, south of Minneapolis, has more than 520 stores and restaurants. All dining venues and attractions, including Nickelodeon Universe, will remain closed until the state provides more guidelines.

-North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr is temporarily stepping down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The FBI is investigating whether Burr sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stocks using nonpublic information about the coronavirus. The agency served Burr with a warrant Wednesday to seize his cellphone.

-Mar-a-Lago, President Trump's club in Palm Beach, Florida, has told members its Beach Club restaurant an oceanfront building and outdoor patio, separate from the main clubhouse would reopen Saturday for lunch service, according to the Washington Post.

-The U.S. Labor Department announced about 36 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close their doors and shrink their workforces. Last week nearly 3 million more people filed claims for jobless help.

-A study from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania has found that ordinary speech can emit small respiratory droplets that linger in the air for at least eight minutes and potentially much longer. The new study did not involve the coronavirus or any other virus, the Washington Post reported, but the authors said the small droplets they studied still could potentially contain enough virus particles to represent an infectious dose. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Worldwide:

-The director of the World Health Organization's emergencies program said the new coronavirus may never go away, the BBC reported. "It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away," Dr. Mike Ryan said during a briefing Wednesday. "HIV has not gone away but we have come to terms with the virus," said Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program. He said he doesn't think "anyone can predict when this disease will disappear," and he noted that other diseases, such as measles, still haven't been eliminated despite there being vaccines for them.

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.

The Weather Companys primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

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Coronavirus Updates: Whistleblower Says COVID-19 Vaccine Unlikely in 18 Months - The Weather Channel