Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks at a White House press briefing held by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in the White House’s James Brady Press Briefing Room on January 21, 2021 in Washington, DC.
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The winter storm and power outages in Texas pose a ‘significant’ problem for the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, medical adviser to the White House, warned Thursday.
“Well, it’s clearly a problem. It’s slowed down in some places and is coming to a standstill,” Fauci said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “We’ll just have to make up for it as soon as the weather gets a little light, the ice melts and we can get the trucks and the people out.”
“It’s important if you have the country … which has been immobilized in many ways,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The Biden government is increasing the rate of vaccinations in the US after a slower-than-expected implementation under former President Donald Trump. However, the winter storm that is raging in Texas is causing some Covid-19 vaccines to be delayed and the vaccination sites to have to close temporarily.
Nearly half a million Texans are still without power on Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, after the state’s electrical network could not keep up with the demand for heat during record low temperatures, which caused more than 4 million interruptions. According to The Weather Channel, millions of people are still under boiling water notices.
The severe weather disrupted service at FedEx’s hub in Memphis and caused package delays in the US, the company said earlier this week. UPS’s package of the Worldport package in Louisville, Kentucky, and another local center in Dallas has since reopened after being temporarily closed Monday night due to the weather.
It is unclear how this will affect the three new community vaccination centers in Dallas, Arlington and Houston that the Biden government plans to help build. Jeff Zients, president Joe Biden’s Covid tsar, told reporters last week that centers would be operational the week of Feb. 22 and that providers could deliver more than 10,000 shots a day.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Once Texas opens more roads and residents have uninterrupted power, health care providers will have to do ‘double time’ on Covid-19 vaccinations, Fauci said Thursday.
About 3 million of the roughly 29 million Texans received at least their first dose of Pfizer or Moderna’s dual dose of Covid-19 vaccines, according to information compiled by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. And 1.2 million people have already had their second chance.
Fauci added that he did not know how many vaccines could be destroyed due to power outages or delays in delivery.
CNBC’s Noah Higgins-Dunn contributed to this report.