Trump Threatens to Withhold Covid Vaccine from New York Until Gov. Cuomo Approves It

• President Donald Trump is giving an update Friday on Operation Warp Speed, the project to develop - and speed up - the production of COVID-19 vaccines.
• It is Trump's first public remarks since he falsely claimed he won the election eight days ago. 

KEY QUOTES

• Trump has said that the coronavirus vaccine under Operation Warp Speed will be delivered to all states “within weeks”—except for the New York. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately."

• “He doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” Trump added. “These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so and that pains me to say that.”
• In late September, Cuomo announced that New York would assemble an independent task force of scientists, doctors, and health experts to review data from every coronavirus vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion,” the Democrat governor said in a statement at the time.

• During his discussion of the rollout, Trump argued:

“These [vaccines] are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so and that pains me to say that."

• He added:

"This is a very successful, amazing vaccine at 90% [effective] and more but — so the governor Cuomo will have to let us know when he’s ready for it. We can’t be delivering it to a the state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately.”

• In response to the president's remarks, a senior advisor to Cuomo said on Twitter that the governor “is fighting to ensure the communities hit hardest by COVID get the vaccine.”

-Josh Herman