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Members include Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical head for the company GlaxoSmithKline, who will be the chief scientist, and a four-star U.S. Army General, Gustave Perna, who will serve as chief operating officer, Trump announced during the press conference.
“We would love to see if we can do it prior to the end of the year. We think we are going to have some good results coming out very quickly,” the president said.
Trump announces that the team is looking at at the 14 vaccine candidates. "I think we're going to have a vaccine in the pretty near future," the president said. "And if we do, we're going to really be a big step ahead. And if we don't, it'll be like so many other cases where you had a problem come in, it'll go away at some point, it'll go away. It may flare up and it may not flare up."
"Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back," he added.
Slaoui, the chief scientist said he’s confident there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020 based on data from an unnamed vaccine. "These data made me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020," he said.