WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump during a press briefing said the United States may provide a vaccine for the novel coronavirus to other countries when it is ready.
"When we have that vaccine it will be discharged and taken care of," Trump told reporters on Tuesday. "It will be a very rapid process all over the country and perhaps we'll be supplying a lot of the vaccine to other parts of the world like we do with ventilators and other things that we all of a sudden have become very good at making."
The Trump administration aims to have a vaccine available by the end of the year or early 2021.
On Monday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that US scientists have begun the phase three trial of the potential vaccine developed by the biotechnology company Moderna.
The NIH plans to conduct the trial at multiple US clinical research sites with participation of approximately 30,000 adult volunteers who are not infected with the novel coronavirus.
The United States has reported more than 4.3 million cases and more than 149,000 virus-related deaths as of Tuesday afternoon, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University.