On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said that the strategy adopted by the Trump administration to distribute COVID-19 vaccines across the United States had fallen far behind. He went on to say that he previously warned about vaccine distribution effort not progressing at a speed it should.
During his speech in Wilmington, Delaware, where his supporters had gathered, the president-elect noted that the Trump administration claimed a few weeks ago that 20 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of Dec. Biden noted that despite only a few days left in Dec., the administration has managed to vaccinate only a few million so far.
Unless the vaccination program speeds up, Biden said, it will take years to vaccinate Americans. A transition officer told CNN that Biden had received a briefing from the coronavirus advisory team on Tuesday. Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said about 20 million people are likely to get vaccinated in the next few weeks, CNBC reported.
According to the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), nearly 11.4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed in the country, and about 2.1 million have already been administered as of Dec 29. Slated to take office on Jan. 20, Biden said he would invoke the Korean War-era Defense Production Act in a bid to force private industry to expedite vaccine production for the U.S. government, according to The Hindu.
Furthermore, he outlined a plan to distribute 100 million vaccine shots, covering 50 million people in the first hundred days after taking office. Biden also repeated that Congress would need to provide the much-needed funding to reach that goal.
Despite the funding, Biden warned that vaccinating the entire population of the United States would still take time. The president-elect explained that even by ramping up to 1 million shots per day, it would still take several months to vaccinate the majority of the U.S. population.
The former vice president described the vaccine distribution as the "greatest operational challenge" Americans have faced as a nation. However, he assured the American public that they will get it done with the help of a new effort that's still not underway.
During an interview with CNN, America's top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said he is confident that a COVID-19 vaccine will be made available to most Americans by April 2021. He noted that a comprehensive vaccine program starts slow but gains momentum eventually.