The Covid-19 statistics in our country have been really devastating. We surpassed 24 million cases and are closing nearly 500,000 American lives lost in the pandemic. Even here in New York City, after the overwhelming illness and death we experienced in the spring, hospitals are once again about to deploy, staff are reorganized to care for Covid patients, and they send military volunteers to support. It looks like we started in 2021 taking a big step back in this pandemic.
But a new administration took office on Wednesday, and that is a cause for hope. The Biden administration is already demonstrating a renewed commitment to science-based public health strategies. Last week, Biden announced a new team of science advisers and created a cabinet post for the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, has publicly pledged to lead science and restore public confidence in the agency. This marks a significant shift from the Trump era, when the White House repeatedly interfered with CDC guidelines and data, strongly editing official health recommendations, blocking the publication of guidelines for restaurant reopening, and other public places and minimizing the risks of reopening schools.
After health workers spent the past year simultaneously fighting Covid-19 and misinforming themselves about the virus, which often originated from Trump and other elected officials, the Biden administration’s support for health messaging Science-based public feels like a huge shoulder load.
It is true that the implementation of the vaccine has been full of problems. Federal officials predicted that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of 2020, but actual figures reported by the CDC fell well below that target and only 2.8 million people received the vaccine in the new year. Although vaccinations have increased, averaging about 1 million doses a day in recent days in the United States, it would still take until the spring of 2022 to vaccinate all adults in the United States at this rate, according to a CNN analysis. And as of Friday, about 40 million doses of vaccine had been distributed, but only about 48%, or 19 million doses, had been administered.
Along with delays in vaccine administration, there are concerns that the supply will end. Last week, after the Trump administration promised to release a stockpile of vaccines reserved for second doses, it became clear that this reserve did not exist.
Despite these setbacks, the Biden administration has promised a substantial increase in federal support with the goal of administering 100 million shots in 100 days, and I hope that will happen. The administration plans to use the Defense Production Act to further increase the production of materials needed to administer vaccines.
For states that are struggling with vaccine deployment, greater support is also promised. The president has expressed plans to deploy the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help establish vaccination sites across the country. He pledged to ensure that these federal resources are targeted at the black, Latino and rural communities that have been hardest hit by the pandemic and has called for the creation of mass vaccination centers and mobile units to address more difficult areas of access.
Finally, I hope that the new administration will also re-establish the global alliances and goodwill that are so important during this global health crisis. Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization and his threats to obtain funding would have had a negative impact on the global fight against diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and measles, and it would place Americans at a higher risk of global pandemic persistence. Biden has vowed to rejoin the WHO and tackle this pandemic as part of the global community.
These are still most of the plans and promises that the new administration has not yet fulfilled. But I have hope. I hope we will stand together against this pandemic and I hope we now have a federal government that will accompany us.