Coronavirus news: US daily death toll shoots back up over 1,000

FDA Chief Stephen Hahn reiterated on Thursday that any FDA decision on a COVID-19 vaccine will be based on the science and data from clinical trials.

Hahn said the career experts in FDA's Center for Biologics Research make decisions on whether to recommend vaccines for approval and he has no plan to contradict them.

"I can tell you throughout this pandemic, throughout my tenure as commissioner, I have not reversed a decision by the career scientists on medical products and I have no intention of doing that now," he said, adding, "We will independently call the balls and strikes."

He responded to concerns the FDA would speed up or slow down vaccine authorizations to impact the election.

"[W]e find ourselves in the position that we're accused of either going too fast or too slow or doing too little or too much. And I suppose, where we land up is if we're hearing criticism from both sides, we're probably in the right place," Hahn said. "At the end of the day, for us, it's about the risk benefit calculus, particularly during a pandemic like COVID-19, and we do need to call the balls and strikes on medical products and we do need to use the available data."

Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health & Human Services, said he has never been told to slow down coronavirus testing amid reports that President Donald Trump had purposely downplayed the threat of coronavirus back in March.

Speaking with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Thursday, Giroir said he has “never been told to slow down testing, or to reduce our efforts,” responding to a question about the president’s reported remarks.

“And in fact, we built on testing every single month and I think where we are right now is really an inflection point,” Giroir said.

He added that the country is at “an inflection point” with testing, noting that “this month, we should have the availability of over 100 million tests, and between 55% and 60% of those -- that's 55 to 60 million -- will be rapid point of care.”

Officials working on the World Health Organization's Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator -- a global collaboration to accelerate the development and access to COVID diagnostics and treatments -- said the organization had received $2.7 billion in funding for the venture, which is less than 10% of the overall cost.

The organization also revealed that it experienced some setbacks in the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial, saying there "was a severe side event and therefore the trial was halted."

"This is normal procedure and good clinical practice because safety is the highest priority in any clinical trial," Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the organization's chief scientist, said. "This is perhaps a lesson, or a wakeup call, for everyone to recognize the fact that there are ups and downs in research, there are ups and downs in clinical development and we have to be prepared for those. It's not always a fast and a straight road."

She added, "But we don't need to be overly discouraged because these things happen, and we have to wait for the determination."

She said clinical trials typically take at least six months to complete. With some vaccine trails having started as early as June, she said officials could receive interim results by the end of the year or early 2021.

"It's a race against this virus and it's a race to save lives. It's not a race between companies, it's not a race between countries," WHO Emergencies Chief Dr. Mike Ryan said. "It's a race to support public health in the safest most effective way possible. That's the race we're in."

In a Harvard Medical Grand Rounds interview on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has overseen the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, expounded on his frustrations in combating the pandemic while officials race to approve a vaccine.

"What we're going to keep seeing is that as ... we keep trying to open up and we don't do it correctly, we're going to see these surges that we've seen in the southern states in the Midwest," he said. "I think as we get into the fall and we do more indoor things we are likely going to see upticks in COVID-19."

When it comes to the looming flu season, Fauci urged the public to look for inspiration in countries like Australia, which had the lightest flu season in memory.

"So I would hope with a combination of everybody getting vaccinated for influenza and the public health measures that we do" there won't be a "massive resurgence of of COVID," Fauci said, noting that vaccine trials were falling short among African Americans.

He also said the media should be more focused on showing people the positives of the potential vaccine.

"You know, the surveys [are disturbing] about people who do not want to get vaccinated and all of the stuff that you're reading and seeing about in the media about the lack of trust in the FDA and the lack of trust in the CDC. That is really not helpful at all to getting people confident in wanting to get vaccinated," he said.