JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
- President Donald Trump celebrated Pfizer announcing promising results for its forthcoming COVID-19 vaccine.
- He wrote on Twitter that it was “SUCH GREAT NEWS!”
- Trump lost the US presidential election last week to Joe Biden.
- His post about the vaccine news was a departure from other posts dedicated to baselessly disputing the election result.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump celebrated Pfizer announcing a successful COVID-19 vaccine, news which broke on the first business day after he lost the US presidential election.
Trump tweeted on Monday morning: “STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!”
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
His tweet came after Pfizer announced that its vaccine, which it is producing with German company BioNTech, had succeeded in the final stage of clinical trials and that it was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.
Pfizer’s data has not been peer reviewed, and it still needs to do more work to prove the safety of the vaccine.
But the announcement was a major step in the fight to stop the virus, which has killed more than 1.2 million people, put billions of people under lockdown, and hammed the global economy.
Pfizer said it plans to apply for emergency approval for the vaccine, though it is not clear how long that process would take.
Trump also pointed to gains in the stock market in his tweet.
Global stocks have hit record highs after Biden's win, and US stock futures then soared on Monday morning after Pfizer's announcement.
The US has been the world's worst-affected country in terms of cases and deaths, with Trump widely criticized for not doing enough as president to try and slow its spread throughout the US.
Trump himself was hospitalized with the virus, and the White House has seen multiple outbreaks.
Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, a Democrat and former vice-president, last week.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
His tweet about the vaccine was markedly different in tone to the rest of his tweets over the weekend, in which he repeated baseless claims that the election was subject to widespread fraud and that Democrats had "stole" the election.
Biden on Monday unveiled a new coronavirus advisory board, doing so two days after most major networks called the presidential race in his favour and as Trump is yet to concede.
In a statement on his transition website, Biden said: "The American people deserve an urgent, robust, and professional response to the growing public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak."