WASHINGTON – The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Sunday that the federal government does not know how many coronavirus vaccines the nation has, a complication that adds to the already Herculean task ahead of the Biden administration.
“I can’t tell you how many vaccines we have, and if I can’t tell you, I can’t tell the governors or tell the state health officials,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Fox News Sunday.
“If they don’t know what vaccine they’re getting, not just this week, but next week and next week, they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many places have to be launched, they can’t know how many vaccinators they need and they can’t figure it out. how many appointments to make for the audience, ”Walensky said.
In an excavation in the Trump administration, Walensky said that ignorance of the supply of vaccines is indicative of the “challenges we have left.”
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President Joe Biden has set himself the goal of administering 100 million vaccines against Covid-19 in its first 100 days. The Biden administration has repeatedly insisted on whether this goal is ambitious enough given the severity of the pandemic.
Walensky acknowledged that the United States needs to vaccinate people faster, but said the nation faces supply restrictions. Production will increase after the first 100 days, Walensky said, and the planned introduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also help alleviate supply problems.
“We really hope we have more vaccines and that will increase the pace at which we can make vaccines,” Walensky said.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the nation also faces distribution problems because the Trump administration, which initiated the program, did not have a clear plan.
“The process of distributing the vaccine, especially outside nursing homes and hospitals, to the general community didn’t really exist when we entered the White House,” Klain told MSNBC on Sunday on “Meet the Press.” .
“So the process to get this vaccine in arms, this is the hard process, this is where we are back as a country and this is where we focus on the Biden administration to get it accelerated,” he added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser who served in the Trump administration, said Sunday that Biden’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days is not a definitive number.
“It’s really a floor and not a roof,” Fauci told CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “It will be a challenge. I think a reasonable goal was set. We always want to do it better than the goal you set.”
These 100 million injections will cover about 67 million people, Fauci said, some of whom will have received the necessary doses, while others will have only received one. To date, the U.S. has administered nearly 22 million doses, well below federal targets.
The need to vaccinate as many people as possible has taken on a new urgency as the coronavirus mutates. Fauci said the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against the new strains.
The general election of Biden surgeon stressed on Sunday that the US is in a race to adapt to the new variants.
“The virus is basically telling us that it will continue to change and we need to be prepared for that,” Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an interview with “This Week” on ABC News.
“So the bottom line is that we’re in a race against these variants, the virus will change and it’s up to us to adapt and make sure we’re ahead,” Murthy said.
When asked if the United States is in a race against the clock before a variant of Covid appears that makes vaccines ineffective, Walensky said Americans should be inoculated when given the opportunity and adhere to strategies. mitigation to deny the possibility of the virus circulating.
“I would say we’ve been in a race all along,” Walensky said. “The more viruses there are, the more viruses reproduce, the more likely we are to have mutations and variants.”