NEW YORK, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday refuted U.S. President Donald Trump's claim about New York state's preparation for COVID-19 vaccination, saying it "untrue."
"What the president says is just untrue. ... We trust the drug companies," Cuomo told CNN's Situation Room.
A number of states, New York included, "set up a separate scientific panel that will review the FDA's (the United States Food and Drug Administration) approval to give people confidence in the (vaccine) approval process," he said, adding that half the American people said "they don't trust the approval process."
Earlier the day, Trump said that a COVID-19 vaccine would not be delivered to "New York until we have authorization to do so."
Cuomo "doesn't trust where the vaccine is coming from ... These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn't trust the fact that it's this White House, this administration," Trump said during a press conference from the White House Rose Garden.
Cuomo "will have to let us know when he's ready for it because otherwise, we can't be delivering it to a state that won't be giving it to its people immediately," Trump added.
Also on Friday, the governor told MSNBC's Live with Katy Tur that "It's not that people don't trust the vaccine companies, the pharmaceutical companies. ... An overwhelming percentage of Americans are worried about political interference in the vaccination process and the approval process by the president."
"The day they distribute the vaccine, we will be ready to start the distribution. Our review of the FDA protocol will be simultaneous (and) concurrent with their delivery," he added.
In the past weeks, Cuomo has repeatedly criticized the federal government's COVID-19 vaccination program, saying it relied too much on private entities and overlooked the minorities and the disadvantaged groups.
The United States recorded over 10,707,000 cases with more than 244,100 related deaths as of Friday evening, according to the real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Enditem
