The International Air Transport Association said it urged governments to begin to carefully plan with industry stakeholders "to ensure full preparedness when vaccines for COVID-19 are approved and available for distribution." It also warned about "potentially severe capacity" constraints when transporting vaccines by air.

"Safely delivering COVID-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won’t happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now," IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac said in a statement. "We urge governments to take the lead in facilitating cooperation across the logistics chain so that the facilities, security arrangements and border processes are ready for the mammoth and complex task ahead."

The association acknowledged "delivering billions of doses of vaccine to the entire world efficiently" will involve "hugely complex logistical and programmatic obstacles."

"We look forward to working together with government, vaccine manufacturers and logistical partners to ensure an efficient global roll-out of a safe and affordable COVID-19 vaccine,” the association said.

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."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced forecasts of national COVID-19 deaths over the next four weeks from 39 modeling groups.

The center said this week’s national forecast indicates an uncertain trend in new COVID-19 deaths reported over the next four weeks and predicts that 3,300 to 8,000 new deaths will likely be reported during the week ending Oct. 3.

The CDC predicts that a total of 205,000 to 217,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by this date.