Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that the US government should have done a better job getting coronavirus vaccines to its citizens.
About 5.3 million people have been vaccinated so far, despite federal officials promising that 20 million vaccines would be given by the end of 2020. In total, less than 20 million vaccines have been distributed across the country.
“Obviously, there are no excuses. We should have gotten 20 divided, and 20 into people’s arms – 20 million, I mean,” Fauci told the Economic Club of Washington. per CNN.
“I think we’ll have to wait the first few weeks of January to determine what, if anything, went wrong.”
Fauci, long-term director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the start of such an ambitious rollout in the midst of the pandemic and over the holiday season may have contributed to delays.
Again, no apologies, but you can explain why you may not have reached the level you want, Fauci said. ‘In order not to make excuses, we should have done better. So let me make that clear.
“We should have done better, but I think we have to wait until maybe we get into the second or third week of January to see if we can now catch up with the original pace.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar blamed the holiday season for delayed delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
“Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized and able to ship, I think it was Dec. 14, and Moderna’s was authorized and available for shipment on Dec. 21. Then of course you have Christmas and New Year,” Azar said during Operation Warp. . Speed briefing.
“So as we continue to ship, you just have the natural human behavioral element of the holiday season in terms of hospitals, pharmacies and other health care providers that individuals can line up for vaccination. That’s also a normal consequence.”
According to Azar, it has also been a problem to strictly enforce the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations to give the first doses of the vaccine to primary care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
“I have encouraged our governors, and I will continue to do so, that if they use all the vaccine that has been ordered – that has been assigned, ordered, distributed, shipped – and they get it into the arms of healthcare providers, everything is great,” said Azar.
“But if their distribution is for some reason difficult and they have vaccines in freezers, then at least you should open up to people 70 and over, 65 and over, then you should make sure that the nursing home patients are vaccinated. “
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