Pfizer Starts U.S. Trial of Potential COVID-19 Vaccine
VAUSE: Right now, according to the World Health Organization, more than 100 viable vaccine programs are underway. One has now started human trials in the U.S. on a much accelerated schedule. And as CNN's Fred Pleitgen reports, if successful, the vaccine could be ready by the end of the year.</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A simple injection that some hope could help bring an end to a global pandemic. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announcing today they dosed the first participants in the U.S. with a vaccine candidate in a clinical trial. Twelve study participants in Germany received doses last month. BioNTech CEO saying preclinical data showed good results.</s>UGUR SAHIN, CEO, BIONTECH: We see vaccine responses. We see some vaccine response at even low dose. And we believe that this vaccine was, since we've seen that in different animal models, but we're also translating into vaccine responses in human subjects.</s>PLEITGEN: The program is called BNT-162, and it's actually a group of four trial vaccines using what's called an mRNA approach, or messenger RNA, approach, which causes the body to produce a protein that triggers an immune response. Pfizer and BioNTech claim, if the certification goes smoothly, they could have millions of doses ready by the end of this year, hundreds of millions of in 2021. BioNTech CEO saying he believes regulators will move fast.</s>SAHIN: The benefit of a vaccine and pandemic situation is much, much greater, and therefore -- therefore an approval and authorization of a vaccine, pandemic situation has to follow other rules than what we have seen in the past.</s>PLEITGEN: But there is a long way to go and a lot that can go wrong. Pfizer and BioNTech are only two of a flurry of companies and institutes trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine ASAP. The World Health Organization says there are currently more than 100 vaccine candidates under development, though only eight have been approved for clinical trials. The first was an experimental trial vaccine spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health. In the U.K., researchers at the University of Oxford are also in clinical trials with their own vaccine candidate, the chief researcher telling out front they are hoping to make the vaccine ready for use by fall.</s>ADRIAN HILL, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: We'll probably enroll as many as 1,000 people into this trial, partly because we've used this type of vaccine before for other immunizations, and partly we -- because we believe the safety protocols should be very good.</s>PLEITGEN (on camera): While some of the early indicators seem promising, there are also a lot of experts around the world who warn there probably isn't a quick fix when it comes to a coronavirus vaccine. Many of the candidates currently under development around the world probably won't be ready anytime soon, and many won't be certified at all. Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.</s>VAUSE: U.S. job numbers will be out on Friday. They're expected to be the worst in decades. Even the Trump White House can't spend what's expected to be an horrendous unemployment rate.</s>KEVIN HASSETT, SENIOR ECONOMIC ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: My guess is that it's going to be north of 16 percent --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Worse, wow.</s>HASSETT: -- maybe as high as 19 or 20 percent. So we are looking at probably the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow. Well, then --</s>HASSETT: It's a tremendous negative shock. A very, very terrible shock.</s>VAUSE: Kevin Hassett initially expected a 20 percent rate for June but revise that after 30 million Americans filed for unemployment last month. A jobless rate not seen since the Great Depression is the major factor in this rush to reopen businesses. It's forced a debate on the need to revive the economy versus public health. Some say the cost of lives is necessary. Here's Brian Todd.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The images make it clear. People want to get out.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open Texas now!</s>TODD: And millions are desperate to get back on the job.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Constitution says we have a right to life and liberty. I have a right to work.</s>TODD: But the rush to get back to normal brings a stark warning from America's top infectious disease expert.</s>DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE: How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be some form of normality sooner rather than later?</s>TODD: The jarring choice offered by Dr. Anthony Fauci comes as new models project a possible sharp increase in coronavirus-related deaths in America through August. Those models tied to recent reopenings of businesses and public spaces across the U.S. and relaxed social distancing. But the president was adamant again that people have to be allowed back to their jobs, and he believes keeping them away could kill them, too.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If they held people any longer with the shutdowns, you're going to lose people that way, too, and you already have, I'm sure. But between drug abuse, and I mean, they say suicide, a lot of different things.</s>TODD: Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose state has been hit harder than most, told our Dana Bash as many lives as possible should be saved. But he asked if Americans could come to an acceptance of certain levels of death in order to get the economy moving again.</s>CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: We've got to let some of these folks get back to work, because if we don't, we're going to destroy the American way of life in these families.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: But will people be able to swallow the notion, if these projections are right, up nearly 3,000 deaths a day?</s>CHRISTIE: They're going to have to.</s>DR. SEEMA YASMIN, FORMER CDC DISEASE DETECTIVE: Some of this language from Chris Christie and other politicians just lacks basic humanity, I think. In the long run, we will be able to replace some jobs. We're not going to be able to replace the lives that are lost.</s>TODD: That debate between America's political leaders and its top doctors over the human cost of reopening, over the kind of carnage Americans could be willing to accept is intensifying.</s>YASMIN: You can't have a strong economy when people are dying or are dead. How will you reopen offices and factories and schools if people have died?</s>TODD: But one public health expert says Chris Christie's message is an important one that Americans need the unvarnished truth that reopening, whenever it happens, will come with a human cost.</s>DR. AMESH ADALJA, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: The fact that you're now admitting that there are going to be increased deaths, I think, is a step to actually being honest with the American public that that's -- that's what the stakes are here. That's what -- that's what the trade-off is going to be. The costs of having an economy functioning are going to be increased cases and increased deaths.</s>TODD (on camera): And despite the projections for an increase in deaths tied to early reopenings, two Trump administration officials have told CNN those numbers are not expected to affect the White House's plans for reopening the country. It could set up an excruciating, drawn-out debate between America's political leaders and top doctors, which could extend maybe into next year. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.</s>VAUSE: After being closed for more than three months, Shanghai Disney will reopen on Monday. It's the first of 12 Disney parks to restart operations since the beginning of the pandemic. The company has seen a 91 percent drop in profits last quarter. So masks will be mandatory for guests. Their temperatures will be taken. They must consent to the government's contact-tracing system. The number of guests will be limited, but there will be an increase in the number of sanitation stations. Disney Park's chief medical officer says in the U.S., parks will reopen in phases but so far, there has been no official date on that announcement, when that will take place. Still to come, South Korea moving to reopen schools. So after the break, we'll look at the measures they're taking to keep classrooms safe and students healthy.