Anthony Fauci told CNN on Tuesday that Operation Warp Speed will not achieve its goal of getting 20 million Americans to receive the coronavirus vaccine by the end of December.
In numbers: Only 2.1 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and nearly 11.5 million doses have been distributed as of Monday.
- With three days to go until the end of the year, the government would need to vaccinate millions of people a day to meet the target.
What he says: “We are certainly not on the numbers we wanted at the end of December,” said Fauci.
- “I believe as we go into January we will gain momentum, which I hope will allow us to catch up with the expected pace we had about a month or two ago when we talked about the planned rollout of the vaccinations,” he continued.
- “We really want to get those priority people vaccinated so that we can get to what we call ‘open season’ for the general population. If you get to the point where you can essentially say that everyone and everyone who wants to be vaccinated, then you turn around. the momentum of the outbreak really changed.
The big picture: In the first week of Pfizer’s vaccine distribution, governors reported getting fewer allocations than expected, even when members of Operation Warp Speed said in early December that they were confident they could distribute enough vaccines to get 20 million people vaccinated.
- Army General Gustave Perna, the member of Operation Warp Speed responsible for the distribution of vaccines, apologized for the “miscommunication” with states about the number of doses they should receive.
- President-elect Joe Biden, who will criticize the Trump administration in a speech on Tuesday for its missed targets, has said he has a plan to administer 100 million shots in his first 100 days.