The newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government remains in the dark about how much vaccine is currently available, and warned that states like New York cannot replenish the limited supply quickly.
‘One of the biggest problems at the moment is that I can not tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can not tell you, I can not tell the governors, and I can not. for the state health officials, ‘said dr. Rochelle Walensky told Fox News Sunday.
Walensky added that the government does not have ‘as many doses as we now want for states like New York [or] for other states claiming that the vaccine has run out. ‘
As President Joe Biden promises to distribute 100 million Covid-19 vaccines in his first hundred days, Walensky said “the supply is likely to be the most limiting constraint early on.”
“We really hope that after the first 100 days we will have a lot more production,” she added.
The Biden administration last week announced its comprehensive plan to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, including an increase in the number of vaccination sites and increased vaccine production. The virus has claimed more than 418,000 U.S. lives and infected more than 25 million in the U.S., according to an NBC News tracker.
According to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, the US recently achieved a rate of 1 million vaccinations per day. The CDC reports that as of Saturday, more than 20.5 million doses have been administered across the country – about half of what the states have available. The vast majority of those vaccinated received only their first doses.
A NBC News poll found that only 11 percent of registered voters say the vaccination process is ‘very good’, while 31 percent say it is ‘fairly good’. Of those who say the implementation did not go well, 64 percent blame the federal government.
In an interview with CBS ” Face ‘the Nation’ which was broadcast on Sunday, dr. Deborah Birx – who coordinated the Trump White House’s Covid-19 response – said the former president ‘has no full-time team in the White House working on coronavirus. . “
Xavier Becerra, nominated by Biden to head the Department of Health and Human Services, was asked in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday whether the Biden team wants to lower expectations about vaccine distribution so that success can be considered an important issue. achievement.
“Well, if the plane dives like that, you will definitely not see it overnight,” he said. ‘What you’re trying to do is that the plane is not going to get right, and so it goes. In three – within 100 days it’s incredibly important to get 100 shots there on vaccines, 100 million shots out there vaccinations. It’s ambitious, it’s bold, it’s doable. We have to do it. But we have to realize that we are doing this while the plane is diving like that. ‘
And in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the goal of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of Biden’s government was ‘daring’ and ‘ambitious’, but “We have to continue that.”
“This is our first goal, this is not our final goal, this is not the end point, this is just a measure that the American people can see and measure how we are doing,” he said.
