President Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million people against COVID-19 in his first 100 days in office depends on the average achieved several times by the Trump administration.
Bloomberg News reported that 1.3 million vaccines were administered on Thursday, Biden’s first full day in office.
However, a record 1.6 million vaccinations were administered on Wednesday, the day Biden took office. The seven-figure figure also reached 1.3 million on Jan. 11 and 1.1 million on Jan. 14 and 16, according to the New York Post.
While he said he and his team were focused on a “war effort,” Biden and his top spokesman have been repeatedly pressured by reporters as to whether the vaccination target is too low.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki wondered Friday why she was not aiming anymore, as last week’s average before Trump left office was 912,497.
“We set that goal before any American would have received a single shot,” Psaki said, referring to the vaccination plan Biden announced in early December.
“So the Biden administration that came in considered it important to set what was described as a bold and ambitious goal at the time, and many doubted that we could even get there.”
On Thursday, Biden expressed similar words after being asked if his goal was ambitious enough.
“When I announced it, you all said it wasn’t possible,” Biden said. “Come on, give me a break, man! It’s a good start.”
Those words came at the end of a briefing in which Biden announced his “large-scale war effort” to overcome the pandemic by invoking the Defense Production Act, which aims to increase vaccine production and establish nationally funded vaccination sites.
Psaki on Friday also blamed the Trump administration for creating operational challenges.
“We want to set our own markers for the American public so they know we’re meeting our goal,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then [the 100-day goal], This is great.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 17.5 million of the 37.9 million vaccines had been distributed nationwide.
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