An American Catholic church body has urged its followers to avoid the coronavirus vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson and advised Catholics to choose between the alternatives offered by Pfizer and Moderna if avaliable.

On Tuesday, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) alleged that the one-dose vaccine was “developed, tested and produced using abortion-derived cell lines” saying it raised questions about “moral permissibility.”

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared the Covid jab for use on Saturday. It is anticipated the shot may be a major step forward in the fight against the disease as it only requires a single dose.

Johnson & Johnson issued a statement on Tuesday stressing that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine.

President Joe Biden has moved forward his aim for enough Covid vaccine doses for every American adult across the US by two months, having said that the administration will aim to have enough shots for everyone who wants one by the end of May.

Mr Biden announced at a press briefing on Tuesday: “We’re now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May.”

Last month, the president vowed at a CNN town hall event in Wisconsin that the administration would have “over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American” by the end of July.

However, on Tuesday, Mr Biden said the government was revising that aim, suggesting that actions taken under his administration had sped up the timeline.

“About three weeks ago, we were able to say that we’d have enough vaccine supply for adults by the end of July,” Mr Biden said. “We rectified that.”

The president has frequently criticised his predecessor, Donald Trump, for a slow start to the vaccination rollout, accusing the former president of failing to ink contracts with Covid vaccine suppliers for enough doses.

Griffin Connolly reports:

Donald Trump’s biographer has compared the former president to notorious American gangster Al Capone, as prosecutors were closing in on the Trump Organisation’s longtime chief financial officer for details about the former president’s financial dealings.

In an interview with MSNBC News on Tuesday, biographer Timothy L O’Brien, author of Trumpnation: The Art of Being the Donald, made the comments amid discussions that New York state prosecutors are sharpening their focus on the company’s longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

“Al Capone ultimately went down because they got his accountant… and the accountant is the one who showed federal investigators how Capone’s organisations were cooking his books,” Mr O’Brien said.

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s US Politics liveblog, where we’ll be bringing you the latest coverage from the White House and beyond.