Biden says COVID vaccinations will ‘take years’ at this pace — and vows to speed it up
President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday criticized the current pace of coronavirus vaccination and promised to accelerate it when he takes office.
Biden said during remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, that as he “long feared and warned” the distribution and administration of the COVID-19 vaccines is “not progressing as it should,” citing President Donald Trump’s administration’s plan to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of the year.
So far, the vaccination rate is far behind that goal with only a couple of days left in 2020.
Roughly 2.1 million people in the United States have received a dose of the vaccine as of Tuesday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 11.4 million doses have been distributed to health care providers.
“If it continues to move as it is now, it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people,” Biden said Tuesday afternoon.
An NBC News analysis found that, at the current pace, it would take nearly 10 years to vaccinate enough Americans to control the pandemic. To achieve Operation Warp Speed’s goal of vaccinating 80% of the population by June, more than 3 million shots would need to be administered each day, the analysis found.
Biden promised that when he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris take office on Jan. 20, 2021, their administration will boost the current pace.
“The Biden-Harris administration will spare no effort to make sure people get vaccinated,” he said. “I’ve laid out three challenges in our first 100 days. One of them is ensuring that 100 million shots have been administered by the end of the first 100 days.”
He said with funding from Congress, “we’d be able to meet this incredible goal,” which he said would entail increasing the current vaccination pace sixfold, or to 1 million shots a day.
“Even with that improvement, even if we boost the speed of vaccination to 1 million shots a day, it will still take months to have the majority of the United States population vaccinated,” the president-elect said. “I’ve directed my team to prepare a much more aggressive effort, with more federal involvement and leadership to get things back on track.”
Two COVID-19 vaccines, one manufactured by Pfizer and the other by Moderna, have been authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Both require two doses, taken four weeks apart.
The shots are being allocated based on state population, with state governments in charge of prioritizing who gets them first.
High-risk populations — including health care and essential workers, residents at long-term care facilities and older Americans — are recommended to be prioritized for the first doses, and officials hope vaccines are more widely available by late spring or early summer.
Biden plans to invoke the Defense Production Act when he takes office to help boost vaccine production, Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box. The act allows presidents to expedite or expand supplies needed for national defense purposes.
“The idea there is to make sure that the personal protective equipment, the test capacity and the raw materials for the vaccines are produced in adequate supply,” Gounder told Squawk Box.
Biden’s criticism of the vaccination pace comes as more than more than 19.5 million coronavirus cases and more than 338,000 deaths have been reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.
The president-elect warned Tuesday that “things are going to get worse before they get better” and encouraged Americans to remain vigilant about taking steps to protect themselves from the virus.
“The next few week and months are going to be very tough, a very tough period for our nation, maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” he said.
Biden and Harris have both received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on camera in an effort to encourage more Americans to get their shot when it becomes available to them.
“It’s literally about saving lives,” Harris said Tuesday after getting the vaccine, according to CNN. “I trust the scientists. And it is the scientists who created and approved this vaccine. So I urge everyone, when it is your turn, get vaccinated.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 6:29 AM with the headline "Biden says COVID vaccinations will ‘take years’ at this pace — and vows to speed it up."
