Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks with Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), not pictured, before taking Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine. received at an event at the NIH Clinical Center Masur Auditorium in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, on Tuesday, December 22, 2020. The National Institutes of Health will host a live-stream vaccination event to enhance the organization’s efforts for its employees on the front lines of the pandemic to start. Photographer: Patrick Semansky / Associated Press / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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The slower-than-expected rollout of the Covid vaccine in the United States is “disappointing,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Thursday.
Officials at Operation Warp Speed, President Donald Trump’s vaccine program, had previously said the country would immunize 20 million people with the first of the two doses of Covid-19 vaccine by December. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that of the more than 12.4 million doses distributed, just under 2.8 million have actually been administered.
“We would have liked it to go smoothly and have 20 million doses delivered to humans today, by the end of (year) 2020, which was the projection. Obviously, it didn’t happen and that’s disappointing,” Fauci said. on NBC’s “Today” show. “Hopefully, as you enter the first few weeks of January, the momentum will get us to where we want to be.”
States and provinces need more resources to speed up the vaccination rate, Fauci said. Trump has spent the past few days trying to defend his administration’s vaccination, saying it is the states’ responsibility to administer the shots once delivered by Operation Warp Speed.
Michael Pratt, a spokesman for the program, said earlier this week that the CDC’s data is likely to be incorrect due to delays in reporting.
Operation Warp Speed remains on track to have approximately 40 million doses of vaccine by the end of December 2020 and to allocate 20 million doses for the first vaccinations, with the distribution of the 20 million first doses through the first week of January as states are placing orders for them, ‘he said in a statement.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, said Thursday on CNN that the federal government has invested massively in vaccine development, but has not matched that effort when it comes to distribution and administration.
“The urgency we’ve put into making a vaccine and the money we’ve spent making a vaccine, we’ve spent $ 24 billion doing essentially a Manhattan Project-like response … That’s it vaccine part, ”he said. “Now comes the vaccination part, which is equally difficult and will require just as much this Manhattan Project-style response.”
“The federal government needs to step up their response to vaccination in the same way that they stepped up the response to making the vaccine,” said Offit, who is also a voting member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory. Commission.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Services, called for “mass vaccination” events on Thursday. He said the government should consider converting places such as polling stations, football stadiums and racing circuits into temporary vaccination clinics.
“We have to vaccinate about two million people a day … instead of 150,000 people a day. And I don’t see the urgency,” he says. told CNN. “We have to vaccinate en masse, and we have to do that now.”