Trump: There Will Be a Coronavirus Vaccine “By the End of the Year”

By Staff, Agencies

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that he was confident that a coronavirus vaccine would be available by the end of the year.

"We are very confident that we are going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year," Trump said, adding that he may be getting ahead of his own advisors in regards to a vaccine prediction.

"The doctors would say 'well, you shouldn't say that.' I'll say what I think," he said.

The comments came during a Fox News "town hall" show broadcast live from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The president also said he would urge the reopening of schools and universities in September, saying "I want them to go back."

Trump said Sunday that a "mistake" in China was the cause of the coronavirus outbreak, "My opinion is they made a mistake. They tried to cover it, they tried to put it out. It’s like a fire," Trump said. "You know, it’s really like trying to put out a fire. They couldn’t put out the fire."

Earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed there was "enormous evidence" to support the theory that the coronavirus originated at a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, not in a nearby wildlife market.

The coronavirus has infected more than 1.1 million people in the United States and has killed more than 65,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.