WASHINGTON – Elected President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday criticized the speed of the distribution of vaccines under the Trump administration and promised to increase the pace when he takes office, while issuing a sober warning about the toll of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Biden offered a bleak assessment of the coming months, saying it would be a very difficult period for our country, and he urged Americans to make the sacrifices necessary to overcome the devastation of the virus.
“It will take all the gravel and determination we have as Americans to deal with it,” he said.
He warned that if the current rate of vaccination continues under President Trump, “it will take years, not months” to vaccinate the country. And he said he had ordered his team to prepare for a more aggressive effort as soon as he took office in three weeks, promising ‘to move heaven and earth to get us moving in the right direction.’
“This is going to be the biggest operational challenge we have ever faced as a nation,” he said. Biden said during a speech in Wilmington, Del., “But we’re going to do it.”
Mr. Biden will take over the presidency as a result of a health crisis that has already killed more than 336,000 people in the United States and caused widespread economic disruption. The distribution of vaccines to the American people would be an early test for him.
Earlier this month, federal officials said their goal was for 20 million people to get their first vaccine vaccination by the end of the year. As of Monday morning, 11.4 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been shipped across the country, but only 2.1 million people in the United States received their first dose, according to a dashboard maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. is. , which is likely to reflect a few days’ reporting backlog.
Mr. Biden promised to get 100 million vaccine shots in the arms of Americans in his first 100 days in office; vaccination currently requires two shots, indicating that about 50 million people would be vaccinated at that time.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden announced new members of its Covid-19 response team, including coordinators to handle vaccinations, testing and supply chain management.
Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to speed up the development and deployment of vaccines, has spent billions of dollars to help drug companies test and manufacture their vaccines and ensure they have a buyer. These investments have helped get vaccines available faster than many experts have predicted.
Yet the start of the vaccines began more slowly than federal officials had hoped.
“We are definitely not at the numbers we wanted to be at the end of December,” said dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s leading expert in infectious diseases, told CNN on Tuesday. But he added: “I believe we will increase the momentum when we come in January.”
Moncef Slaoui, the scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said as recently as last week that there was a good chance that the first 100 million people in the United States would be vaccinated by the end of March.
Michael Pratt, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, defended the rate of vaccination. He said in a statement that it was proof of the success of Operation Warp Speed that 20 million doses had already been made available to states and other jurisdictions. (Not all the doses were sent.) And mr. Trump has in ‘after tweet that it was ‘up to the states to distribute the vaccines that were once brought to the designated areas by the federal government.’
The rate of vaccination in the United States is expected to increase in the first months of next year as more vaccine supplies become available and more facilities begin to reach a wider range of Americans. So far, vaccines have been given mainly to health workers in hospitals and to residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
In his remarks Tuesday, Mr. Biden said he could ‘return to normalcy’ ‘in the next year’, but he also offered an ominous forecast for the near future. “We need to steel our backbone for what lies ahead,” he said, adding that the next few months “could be the most difficult during this whole pandemic.”
“I know it’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth,” he said.
He expressed his hope that Mr. Trump, who resisted wearing a mask and Mr. Biden mocked during the campaign to wear one, can still influence the public in a positive way.
“It will make a big difference for President Trump to say, ‘Wear masks,'” he said. Biden said. “I hope the president will clearly and unequivocally urge all Americans to take the vaccine as soon as it is available.”
Hours before Mr. Speaking of which, Vice President Kamala Harris received her first dose of Covid-19 vaccine. The shot was fired on live television, as did Mr Biden last week when he received the Pfizer vaccine at a Delaware hospital.
Me. Harris received the Moderna vaccine at United Medical Center, a public hospital in southeast Washington. She urged Americans to be vaccinated as well, saying: ‘It is relatively painless. It happens really fast. It’s safe. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, also received the vaccine on Tuesday.
Government officials and local officials have long said they need more money to distribute and administer vaccines. The $ 900 billion emergency relief package that Mr. Trump on Sunday set aside more than $ 8 billion for the distribution of vaccines, roughly in line with the $ 8.4 billion demanded by congressional health departments. The CDC sent $ 200 million to the states in September for the effort, followed by another $ 140 million this month.
The government said the goal is for anyone who wants a vaccine to get it by June, but it has not yet secured enough stock of vaccines approved for use. The United States has secured commitments for enough vaccine to vaccinate 200 million of the approximately 260 million adult Americans eligible.
Moderna has agreed to deliver 200 million doses of its vaccine to the United States, with the first half coming at the end of March and the second half by the end of June.
Pfizer has also agreed to provide 200 million doses. Each person who needs two shots misses the supply of 120 million doses.
During the summer, before the vaccine proved to be effective, Pfizer initially agreed to give 100 million doses to the United States. At the time, the government passed on an offer from Pfizer to include additional supplies.
But when it became clear that more doses were needed, the government spoke to Pfizer again. In a deal announced last week, Pfizer agreed to offer an additional 70 million doses by the end of June and another 30 million by the end of July.
As part of the agreement, the government agreed to enact the Defense Production Act, a Korean wartime law that allows the government to secure key supplies faster by forcing suppliers to prioritize orders from a specific contractor. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Operation Warp Speed 18 times used the Defense Production Act 18 times, including manufacturing glass vials and syringes.
Mr. Biden said Tuesday that he would also take advantage of the adoption of the Defense Production Act, saying he would “order the private industry to speed up the production of the necessary materials for the vaccines and preservatives.”
The government has a number of ways to deliver vaccines to the 60 million American adults that are not covered by the existing deals with Pfizer and Moderna.
It could possibly exercise options to buy more doses from Pfizer or Moderna. The government may also pay attention to vaccines from other manufacturers that are expected to report the results of the late stage in the coming weeks. Johnson & Johnson expects results at the end of next month from a trial of its single-vaccine vaccine, a format that will make it easier to deliver than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. And a U.S. trial evaluating a two-shot vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford could have results in February.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden acknowledges that he has not yet taken control of the government’s virus response, saying: “My ability to change the direction of this pandemic will begin in three weeks.” And he made it clear that he would need the help of Congress next year to provide additional funding to carry out his plans.
But even when he warned about the difficult weeks and months ahead, he made an optimistic remark about the longer term.
“We’re going through it,” he said. “There will be brighter days.”
Thomas Kaplan reported from Washington, and Rebecca Robbins of Bellingham, Wash.;