Coronavirus

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the world is celebrating major developments in the global race for a vaccine. All year, since this pandemic hit, our greatest scientific minds have been working around the clock to develop a vaccine that will finally bring the pandemic and the crisis associated with it to an end. Researchers are testing dozens of vaccines in the hope of finding at least one that can stop the spread of the virus, which has claimed more than 1.2 million lives worldwide and nearly 240,000 here in the United States alone.

Early data from Pfizer's vaccine trial gives us a lot of reasons to be hopeful when the company announced on Monday that its vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease. For reference, standard flu vaccines for the seasonal flu are typically 40 to 60 percent effective, so 90 percent is a big deal. This breakthrough is a testament to the ingenuity and the near-universal commitment to trying to find a vaccine that will eliminate the threat of this pandemic, and it is a sign of hope for all people around the world.

Later this month, once Pfizer has collected the recommended 2 months of safety data, the company plans to request emergency authorization for the vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration. By the end of the year, it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people. Congress has made tremendous investments in the development of therapeutics and of vaccines through the CARES Act, and I am incredibly proud of the men and women who have led this fight on the frontlines, including in my State of Texas.

During preclinical trials over the summer, scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio tested the Pfizer vaccine on monkeys, with impressive results. Dr. Deepak Kaushal, who oversaw the study, said they saw a 100-percent protection rate in the monkeys that were given the Pfizer vaccine.

Once it was ready for human trials, hundreds of Texans volunteered to be vaccinated. Nearly 200 patients from Austin have participated in the study. The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has enrolled more than 500 participants at its three sites in Galveston, League City, and Clear Lake City, and hundreds more in the Dallas-Forth Worth area have volunteered to be part of the trial.

One of those Texans is a woman named Andrea Lucia, who received her first dose of the vaccine from a clinic in Keller, TX, in late September and returned for the second dose 3 weeks later. Like other volunteers in a double-blind study, where half gets a placebo and the other half gets the vaccine, Andrea doesn't know if she received the vaccine or not, but every week, she is asked if she has any symptoms. Andrea said she will have occasional followup appointments over the next year and a half, and once the vaccine becomes publicly available, she will find out if she received it already through the clinical trials.

I thank Andrea and the thousands of men and women like her who have volunteered to test these vaccines in the ongoing clinical trials. They have risked their own health to ensure the world can access a safe and effective vaccine as quickly as possible and, of course, subject to the determination by the Food and Drug Administration that it is safe and effective.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the brilliant researchers, scientists, doctors, and nurses who sprinted at full speed in the race for this vaccine for months on end. America is proud of their heroic work, and we will keep cheering them on and supporting their work as the race for a vaccine continues

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source