(CNN) – President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the United States will have enough coronavirus vaccines for 300 million Americans by the end of July. He stressed that he believes his administration has made significant progress as there was no implementation plan under the Trump administration.
“In three weeks, working day and night with a lot of people behind me and in front of me, we’ve already bought enough vaccines for all Americans, and now we’re working to get those vaccines into the arms of millions of people.” Biden said during his speech at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Biden used his NIH appearance to announce that the previously announced vaccine purchase schedule had been brought forward.
Moderna and Pfizer will deliver a total of 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of July, instead of late summer, he said. The companies are also expected to deliver 100 million doses by the end of May instead of the end of June.
The president, echoing claims made by other government officials since the beginning of his tenure, assured the Trump administration “had no plan” for the distribution of vaccines.
“While scientists were working on the discovery of vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be honest about it – didn’t do his job in preparation for the daunting challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans. I have not ordered enough vaccinations. He did not mobilize enough people to give the injections. It has not established federal vaccine centers where eligible people can get their injections, ”said Biden. “When I became president three weeks ago, the United States had no plans to vaccinate most of the country. It was a complete mess.
In the closing days of the Trump administration, officials announced that they would release doses of the coronavirus vaccine they had reserved for second doses of the vaccine. However, soon after the announcement, it became clear that many of those reserves had already been released last year when production increased.
Thursday’s announcement will bring forward the Biden administration’s earlier schedule for vaccinating the US population. Late last month, Biden had said the United States is on track to have enough injections by the end of summer or early fall to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans.
The president also said on Thursday that the country is on track to meet its goal of giving 100 million doses of vaccines to Americans in its first 100 days in office.
Early in his visit to the NIH, Biden expressed frustration at the Trump administration’s lack of a vaccine supply plan and said he was angry that he “did not have all the data.”
“What bothered me was that not all data was available,” said Biden. “So we had the clear impression that a lot more vaccines were available to start distribution, that it was a distribution problem. What happened and continues to happen, but that was not the main problem. It was enough.
In addition, he said, there were problems associated with transporting the vaccines, obtaining paraphernalia related to the vaccines, having a sufficient number of people to inject the vaccine, and taking the vaccines to places that are easily accessible. are accessible to the public.
CNN’s Betsy Klein and DJ Judd contributed to this report.