Trump claims credit for US Covid vaccines: ‘You’d be in a lot of trouble right now’

Former president said vaccines would not yet have arrived in US without him

Donald Trump claimed credit for the US Covid vaccine success as he told an audience in North Carolina they would “be in a lot of trouble right now” without him.

The former president made the claims as he told the state’s GOP convention that his economic successes while in office had only been derailed by the pandemic.

“We had this horrible thing come in from China, we got that one right too by the way as well you notice, that was an easy one, Wuhan,” he told the audience at the event in Greenville on Saturday night.

And he added: “We have done an incredible job, mostly importantly with the vaccine coming up with it, incredible job.”

Mr Trump then told the crowd that he deserved credit for making “somewhat of a bet” by investing billions of dollars into buying vaccine shots and equipment.

“We save a period of a year, you wouldn’t have the vaccine now, this room would be empty,” he added.

“You would have asked me to be here and I would have said ‘No thank you’ and you would say the same thing and this would be an empty room.

“Your state would be in a a lot of trouble and this country would be in a lot of trouble because we probably would not have the vaccine until October or even later than that.

“One of the things I am most proud about is that we did the vaccine and we pushed the FDA, they have never been pushed like that before.”

Joe Biden has acknowledged that the vaccines were developed under Mr Trump, but his administration said that the distribution of the vaccines was massively unorganised when they took office.

Mr Biden is trying to get one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to at least 70 per cent of Americans by 4 July.

More than 33.4m Americans have tested positive for Covid-19 vaccine, which has taken 597,000 lives across the US.