| | | Trump to Announce Covid Plasma Treatment Authorization
By Kevin Cirilli and Tony Czuczka
Bloomberg
August 23, 2020, 1:13 PM CDT Updated on August 23, 2020, 1:25 PM CDT
-- People familiar say blood plasma EUA coming from regulators
-- Would make it easier to proceed on treatment Trump has touted
President Donald Trump will announce on Sunday that a new coronavirus treatment involving blood plasma donated by people who’ve recovered from the disease has received an emergency use authorization from U.S. regulators.
Trump will make the announcement at a press conference due to start at 5:30 p.m. EDT, said two people familiar with the situation who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to clear for use with certain patients what’s known as convalescent plasma. The move would make it easier for patients to get the product, which Trump has touted even though its effectiveness hasn’t been proved.
Trump’s chief of staff earlier blamed federal bureaucrats for slowing the U.S. response to the virus pandemic, which has killed more than 175,000 Americans so far, ahead of what had been touted as “therapeutic breakthrough.”
After Trump claimed on Saturday that FDA employees were engineering delays to sabotage his re-election, Mark Meadows said the president’s Twitter comment reflected “frustration” with bureaucrats there.
“They want to do things they way they’ve always done it,” Meadows said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This president is about cutting red tape. That’s what the tweet was all about.”
Major Breakthrough
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Saturday on Twitter that Trump would announce a “major therapeutic breakthrough” against Covid-19. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Health and Human Service Secretary Alex Azar will also attend, she said.
Meadows suggested part of the reason Trump tweeted about the FDA on Saturday is that he wants to make federal health agencies “feel the heat” to deliver results.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Meadows said “the announcement that’s coming today should have been made several weeks ago.”
“It was a fumble by a number of people in the federal government that should have done it differently, and having been personally involved with it, sometimes you have to make them feel the heat if they don’t see the light,” he said.
— With assistance by Anna Edney
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