U.S. officials on Tuesday said that a vaccine for the coronavirus is at least a year away after President Donald Trump said it would be ready soon.

At a event in New Delhi, Trump said that he had asked Congress for $2.5 billion to fight the coronavirus and to find a vaccine.

“Now they have studied it, they know very much. In fact, we are very close to a vaccine,” he said.

Trump also predicted that the virus is “a problem that’s going to go away.”

But just hours later, U.S. officials reportedly told senators that a vaccine could take 12 to 18 months to develop.

“The vaccine for the coronavirus is moving more rapidly than any vaccine we have already tried to approve – but it will take a year or 18 months,” Sen. Lamar Alexander told CNN’s Manu Raju. “The way to stop [an outbreak] is quarantine and monitoring.”

Shortly after Trump downplayed the severity of the Coronavirus and said that the spread of the virus was under control, US officials told senators that the virus was highly contagious and that a vaccine was at least 12 months-18 months away, according to three senators present

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 25, 2020

Asked if the virus is under control in the US, as Trump said, Manchin said: “I did not hear that in our briefing – that everything is under control .. that’s what concerned me.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 25, 2020

Lamar Alexander said: “The vaccine for the Coronavirus is moving more rapidly than any vaccine we have already tried to approve – but it will take a year or 18 months. The way to stop (an outbreak) is quarantine and monitoring.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 25, 2020

There were 40 senators present for the all-senators briefing, Alexander said

Senators also said there was concern that there have not been enough masks produced in the US to help prevent the spread of the virus. *Fixing words from previous thread

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 25, 2020

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