President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to distribute and administer Covid vaccine shots, saying the government has failed to achieve its own goals.
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is far behind,” he said at a news conference. “As I have long feared and warned, efforts to distribute and administer the vaccine are not going as it should.”
He said his administration will “move heaven and earth” to speed up the distribution and delivery of the Covid vaccines once he takes office on Jan. 20. He reiterated his government’s pledge to have administered 100 million doses of vaccine by his 100th day in office.
To achieve that goal, he said, “it would be five to six times faster than the current rate of 1 million shots a day.” He said his team will act more aggressively to ramp up the management of the shots, but even at 1 million a day, it will take months to vaccinate the majority of the population.
“This will be the greatest operational challenge we have ever faced as a nation,” he added. ‘We’re going to get it done. It will require an enormous new effort. It’s not underway yet. ‘
Biden said his government will also invoke the Defense Production Act, a war law that allows the president to force companies to prioritize production for national security, to ensure manufacturers have sufficient materials needed for the production of vaccines. He said he will also use the authority to expand the production of personal protective equipment such as masks.
He added that his government will “set up vaccination sites and send mobile units to hard-to-reach communities.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 11.4 million doses of vaccines had been distributed to the states as of Monday, but just over 2.1 million doses. The agency notes that its data may fall short of the actual number of doses administered as states and jurisdictions report the data.
“A significant difference between the number of doses divided and the number of doses administered is expected at this point in the COVID vaccination program due to several factors, including delays in reporting doses administered, management of available vaccine stocks by jurisdictions and pending launch of vaccination through the federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program, ”the agency says on the vaccine tracking site.
Representatives of the CDC have not responded to CNBC’s request for further comment on the disparity between administered doses and divided doses.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged on CNN on Tuesday that the rollout of the vaccine has been slower than expected.
“We are certainly not on the numbers we wanted at the end of December,” he said in an interview with Jim Sciutto. “I believe as we move into January we will see an increase in momentum which will allow us, Jim, to catch up with the expected pace.”
Michael Pratt, an Operation Warp Speed spokesman, reiterated that the number of doses administered reported by the CDC is likely too low due to delays in data 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. Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s Covid-19 advisory team, said on “CBS This Morning” Tuesday that the incoming government “doesn’t have all the information it needs to understand where the bottlenecks are.”
He also noted that he is concerned that the Trump administration is overly optimistic when it comes to vaccination timeline. Trump’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar has said it should be possible to vaccinate the general public in March.
“I worry that I promise too much when things will return to normal,” said Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard University.
He vowed that Biden’s records will be more transparent about where the issues are, whether it’s the production, distribution, or administration of the recordings.