US President Donald Trump claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine would have taken five years to develop if he wasn't president.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump claimed he was the one who pushed for vaccines to roll out.
"If I wasn't president, you wouldn't have a vaccine for five years," he told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade.
"I pushed the FDA and companies and everybody else involved like nobody's been ever pushed before - and now you have it rolling out."
"Frankly, they could've done it last week," he added. "They could've even done it a week sooner if they'd heard from me."
"But this has been a medical miracle and it's going to have a tremendous impact."
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1338263195941818370
The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use on Saturday (local time).
Trump confirmed the vaccine had been approved and would be administered in less than 24 hours.
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"We have delivered a safe and effective vaccine in just nine months," he said in a video posted on Twitter.
"This is one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history."
The vaccine, proven to be 95 percent effective, has already been approved in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The first three million doses of the vaccine began going out to states in the US on the weekend and will be prioritised for health workers and care home residents.
The US broke its daily death toll record for COVID-19 on Friday.
The country confirmed 3309 coronavirus deaths, breaking the previous record of 3206 deaths recorded on Wednesday.
