WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first known US case of a highly contagious variant of coronavirus was discovered in Colorado on Tuesday, and President-elect Joe Biden said it could be years before most Americans are vaccinated against the current rate of spread.
Biden’s prediction of a grim winter seemed aimed at lowering public expectations that the pandemic will be over soon after he took office on Jan. 20, while also sending a message to Congress that his government will want to significantly increase spending to reduce the distribution of to accelerate and expand vaccines. testing and providing funding to states to help reopen schools.
Biden, a Democrat, said about 2 million people have been vaccinated, far less than the 20 million outgoing Republican President Donald Trump promised by the end of the year. Biden defeated Trump in the November election.
“As I have long feared and warned, efforts to distribute and administer the vaccine are not proceeding as it should,” said Biden in Wilmington, Delaware. At the current rate, “it will take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”
Shortly after his comments, Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced on Twitter that his state had discovered a case of highly contagious coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 first discovered in the UK.
Today we discovered Colorado’s first case of the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK.
Coloradans health and safety is our top priority and we will monitor this case as well as all COVID-19 indicators closely. pic.twitter.com/fjyq7QhzBi
– Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) December 29, 2020
Biden’s goal of making sure that 100 million shots are delivered in the office by the end of his 100th day would mean ramping it up “ five to six times faster to 1 million shots a day, ” Biden said, pointing out. that Congress should approve additional funding.
“Even with that improvement, even if we increase the vaccination rate to 1 million injections per day, it will be months before the majority of the US population is vaccinated,” he said. He predicted that the situation would not improve until ‘well into March’.
Biden also said he intends to invoke the Defense Production Act, which gives the president the power to expand industrial production of important materials or products for national security or other reasons, to “increase the production of materials. needed for the vaccine to accelerate. “
Trump himself appealed to the law during the pandemic.
To safely reopen schools, Biden said Congress should provide funding for things like additional transportation so students can maintain social distance and maintain better ventilation in school buildings.
Congress should also help make COVID-19 testing more readily available and help pay for protective equipment for health workers, Biden added.
Harris gets the vaccine
Earlier in the day, Vice President Kamala Harris received a COVID-19 vaccination on live television in an effort to boost confidence in the vaccination, even as he warned it will take months before it will be available to everyone.
Harris, who is black and Asian-American, received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from a nurse with a mask and a visor at a medical center in predominantly black southeastern Washington.
The Biden team has stressed the importance of encouraging the spread and inoculation of vaccines in non-white groups particularly hard hit by the coronavirus.
Biden has vowed to make it a top priority in the fight against the coronavirus, which has infected more than 19 million people in the United States and killed more than 334,000 people. He received his first injected dose of the vaccine on live television last week. Two doses are required for complete protection.
Trump, who had COVID-19 in October, has often downplayed the severity of the pandemic, overseeing a response that many health experts say was disorganized and arrogant, sometimes ignoring the science behind disease transmission.
Biden reiterated his call for people to wear masks and to listen to the advice of medical experts to prevent the spread of infection.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, told CBS News the transition team still didn’t have all the information it needed to understand the bottlenecks hindering vaccine distribution.
He said the Trump administration may have raised unrealistic expectations that anyone who wanted to get vaccinated could do so by the end of June 2021.
Separately on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, majority leader in the US Senate, postponed a vote on Trump’s call to boost COVID-19 checks for Americans to $ 2,000, in a rare challenge for his fellow Republican. Biden has said he is in favor of the raise of an already approved $ 600.
(Report by Trevor Hunnicutt, Susan Heavey, Lisa Lambert and David Brunnstrom; Written by David Brunnstrom and Lawrence Hurley; edited by Noeleen Walder, Jonathan Oatis, and Howard Goller)