President Joe Biden said Monday that he believes it will be “this spring” when any American who wants a COVID-19 vaccine can get one. This is probably the most ambitious target publicly mentioned by his administration to date.
“I think it will be this spring. I think we will be able to do this this spring,” Mr. Biden said Monday when a reporter asked him when any American who wants a vaccine can get one. “But it will be a logistical challenge that goes beyond anything we’ve ever tried in this country. But I think we can do that. I’m confident that by the summer we’ll be on track to move toward herd immunity and increase access for people who don’t I’m on the top, on the list, up to the kids and how we deal with it. But I feel good about where we’re going and I think we can do that. ”
In recent days, Biden administration officials, at calls and press conferences, have refused to set a specific timetable for when the vaccine will be available to the general public.
The new president has also raised hopes for how many doses of the vaccine can be given in the first 100 days of office, revising it from 100 to 150 million. Some have questioned whether the Biden administration’s 100 million shots in the first 100 days were ambitious enough, given that the US was already administering about 1 million shots a day when it took office.
Dr Anthony Fauci, now Mr Biden’s adviser on the COVID-19 response, said in a “Make the Nation” interview On Sunday, the administration hopes to overcome this goal.
“It will be a challenge,” Fauci said. “I think a reasonable goal has been set, we always want to do better than the goal you set, but it’s really a floor and not a ceiling.”
In December, Fauci estimated that it could be “sometime by the end of March, the beginning of April, that the normal healthy man and woman on the street, who do not have underlying conditions, could achieve this.” Fauci said he hopes that by early summer, enough people will be vaccinated in the United States for the nation to start arriving. herd immunity. There is no established determination of herd immunity to COVID-19, but experts estimate that at least about 70% of the population must have immunity to the virus to achieve it.
One CBS News poll Earlier this month, 59% of Americans surveyed said they felt the vaccine’s launch was moving too slowly, while fewer remained hesitant about getting it. Forty-one percent said they would get shot as fast as they could, while 37 percent said they would wait and see how the others did first.