WASHINGTON – The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government does not know how much coronavirus vaccine the nation has, a complication that adds to the already daunting task for the Biden administration.
“I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell you, then I can’t tell the governors and I can’t tell the state health officials,” said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday.”
“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’ll be getting, not just this week but next week and the week after, they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators they need, and how many vaccines they need,” they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public, ”Walensky said.
In a dig at the Trump administration, Walensky said the lack of knowledge of the vaccine supply is indicative of “the challenges we have been left with.”
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President Joe Biden has set a goal to deliver 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots within his first 100 days. The Biden administration has repeatedly insisted on whether that goal is ambitious enough given the severity of the pandemic.
Walensky acknowledged that the US should vaccinate people more quickly, but she said the nation faces supply restrictions. Production will increase after the first 100 days, Walensky said, and the anticipated introduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also help alleviate delivery problems.
“We really hope that we will get more vaccines and that will speed up the pace at which we can do the vaccinations,” Walensky said.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the nation is also facing distribution problems because the Trump administration, which started the program, had no clear plan.
“The process of spreading the vaccine, especially outside of nursing homes and hospitals, to the community as a whole didn’t really exist when we entered the White House,” Klain told MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“So the process of getting that vaccine in arms, that’s the difficult process, that’s what we stand behind as a country and that’s what we’re aiming for in the Biden government to ramp that up,” he added. he adds.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser who served in the Trump administration, said on Sunday that Biden’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days is not a definitive number.
“It’s really a floor and not a ceiling,” Fauci told CBS “Face The Nation.” “It’s going to be a challenge. I think it was a reasonable goal that was set. We always want to do better than the goal you’ve set.”
Those 100 million injections will cover about 67 million people, Fauci said, some of whom received the required two doses, while others received just one dose. To date, the US has administered nearly 22 million doses, well below federal targets.
The need to vaccinate as many people as possible has gained new urgency as the coronavirus mutates. Fauci said the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against new strains.
Biden’s surgeon general’s pick on Sunday stressed that the US is in a race to adapt against the new variants.
“The virus is basically telling us it will keep changing and we have to be ready,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy during an interview with ABC News “This Week.”
“So the bottom line is that we’re in a race against these variants, the virus is going to change and it’s up to us to adapt and make sure we stay ahead,” said Murthy.
When asked if the US is in a race against time before a Covid variant emerges that renders the vaccines ineffective, Walensky said Americans should be vaccinated when given the chance and adhere to mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of the virus. to deny.
“I’d say we’ve been in a race all this time,” said Walensky. “The more viruses there are, the more viruses that multiply, the more likely we will get mutations and variants.”