Expressing confidence, President Donald Trump has said the US would have a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year. Trump’s assurance contradicts claims by health experts who say that a vaccine could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months before it is readily available to the public.

“We think we are going to have a vaccine by the end of this year. We are pushing very hard,” he said.

Johnson & Johnson, which has partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services to manufacture a vaccine, has said it is hoping to get approval for one in early 2021.

Trump insisted he would be happy for another country to beat US researchers to the medicine, saying “if it’s another country I’ll take my hat off.”

“I don’t care, I just want to get a vaccine that works.”

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing,” said Trump, who as recently on Friday had said he hoped fewer than 100,000 Americans would die and earlier in the week had talked about 60,000 to 70,000 deaths.

Trump, who has been criticized for not moving faster early in the year to stop the spread of the disease, sought to blunt the criticism by blaming China.

The WHO reported that 2,909 people in the U.S. died on Thursday, shattering the previous record of 2,471 deaths reported on April 23^rd.

As of Saturday night, the U.S. has more than 1.2 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 66,000 deaths from it, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.