President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration’s effort to distribute and administer vaccines against Covid, saying the administration has failed to meet its own goals.
“The Trump administration’s vaccine distribution plan is lagging behind, far behind,” it said in a news release. “As I have long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should.”
He said his administration will “move heaven and earth” to speed up the distribution and administration of Covid vaccines once he takes office on January 20th. He reiterated his administration’s commitment to administering 100 million doses of vaccine on its 100th day in office.
To achieve that goal, he said, “the current rate would have to be increased from five to six times to a million shots a day.” He said his team will act more aggressively to increase gun administration, but even with a million a day, it will take months to vaccinate the majority of the population.
“This will be the biggest operational challenge we have faced as a nation,” he added. “We will. It will take a new effort. It is not yet underway.”
Biden said his administration will also invoke the Defense Production Act, a war law that allows the president to force companies to prioritize manufacturing for national security, to ensure manufacturers have enough materials needed for vaccine production. . He said he will also use the authority to expand the production of personal protective equipment such as masks.
He added that his administration “will establish vaccination sites and send mobile units to hard-to-reach communities.”
Although more than 11.4 million doses of vaccine had been distributed in states as of Monday, just over 2.1 million doses had been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency notes that its data may delay the actual number of doses administered as states and jurisdictions report the data.
“A large difference is expected between the number of doses distributed and the number of doses administered at this point in the COVID vaccination program due to several factors, including delays in notification of administered doses, management of vaccine stocks available by jurisdictions and the pending release of vaccination through the federal pharmacy program for long-term care, ”the agency says on its vaccine monitoring site.
CDC representatives did not return CNBC’s request for further comment on the disparity between administered doses and distributed doses.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted to CNN on Tuesday that vaccine deployment has been slower than expected.
“We’re certainly not in the numbers we wanted to be in late December,” he said in an interview with Jim Sciutto. “I think as we get into January, we’ll see an increase in momentum that, Jim, I hope will allow us to pick up the pace.”
Michael Pratt, spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, reiterated that the number of doses administered reported by the CDC is likely to be lower due to delays in data reporting.
“Operation Warp Speed continues on track to have approximately 40 million doses of vaccine and allocate 20 million doses for the first vaccinations by the end of December 2020, with the distribution of the first 20 million doses to cover the first week of January as states place orders on them, “he said in a statement.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s Coviden-19 advisory team, told CBS This Morning on Tuesday that the incoming administration does not “have all the information it needs to understand where the bottlenecks are. “.
He also noted that he is concerned that the Trump administration is too optimistic about the vaccination schedule. Trump’s HHS secretary Alex Azar has said the general public should be able to get vaccinated before March.
“I worry about promising too much when things can go back to normal,” said Gawande, a surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard University.
He promised that the administration of Biden will be more transparent about where the problems are, whether in the manufacture, distribution or administration of the dams.