The US has ramped up COVID-19 vaccinations in recent days after a slower-than-expected start, bringing the number of shots delivered to about 4 million, government health officials said Sunday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, also said on ABC’s “This Week” that President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to deliver 100 million injections of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office. is achievable.
And he rejected President Donald Trump’s false claim on Twitter that deaths and cases of coronavirus in the US have been greatly exaggerated.
“All you have to do … is into the trenches, the hospitals, the intensive care units and see what happens. Those are real numbers, real people and real dead, ” Fauci said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the death toll in the US has risen to over 350,000, the highest of any country, while more than 20 million people have been infected nationally. States have reported a record number of cases in recent days and funeral homes in Southern California are inundated with bodies.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the pandemic in his city is getting worse as the virus spreads rapidly within households and people are dropping their guard. “This is a virus that runs off our weakness, from our exhaustion,” he said.
Experts believe that the actual number of deaths and infections in the US is much higher and many cases have been overlooked, in part due to insufficient testing.
Fauci said he saw “a tiny ray of hope” after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 a day, a marked increase in vaccinations. He said the total comes to about 4 million.
He acknowledged that the US had failed to meet its goal of shipping and distributing 20 million doses by the end of December.
“There have been a few problems. That’s understandable, ”said Fauci. “We are not where we want to be, no doubt about that.”
But he expressed optimism that momentum will pick up in mid-January and that the US will eventually vaccinate 1 million people a day. Biden’s “goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days is a realistic goal,” Fauci said.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development and distribution, told CBS that 17.5 million doses have been shipped. About 13 million of these have been distributed among clinics, hospitals and other places where they will be administered, according to Fauci.
The target of 20 million doses has not been achieved because local health departments and medical facilities had to remain focused on testing to handle a wave of cases, said US surgeon general Jerome Adams. And because of the holidays, health workers took time off, he said.
‘I don’t want anyone to think I’m Pollyannish here. That’s what we’ve delivered, and we hope that turns into vaccinations. That didn’t come up the way we’d like, “Adams said in CNN’s” State of the Union. ”
On Sunday morning, Trump falsely tweeted that the outbreak was “much exaggerated” because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “ridiculous” methodology. He also complained that Fauci has been credited by the news media for doing “an incredible job” while Fauci “works for me and the Trump administration, and I’m not getting credit for my work in any way.”
Fauci and others warn that an additional increase is likely due to holiday gatherings and the cold weather keeping people indoors.
“It can and probably will get worse in the coming weeks, or at least maintain this very terribly high number of infections and deaths that we are seeing,” Fauci said.
Concerns have spread abroad, where British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said tougher lockdown restrictions in England are likely as a variant of the coronavirus has pushed infection rates to their highest ever level. More than 50,000 new infections have been reported daily in the past six days.
Scientists have said the variant is up to 70% more contagious. While Fauci said the US should do its own research, he tried to reassure viewers that British researchers believe the mutated version isn’t more deadly or makes people sicker and that vaccines are effective against it.
But Scott Gottlieb, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner who sits on the board of vaccine maker Pfizer, said on CBS ‘Face the Nation’ that the variant “ really creates more urgency to try and get this vaccine faster and more people vaccinated. “
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Associated Press writers worldwide contributed to this report.