The U.S. has pushed up COVID-19 vaccinations over the past few days after a slower-than-expected start, bringing the number of shots fired to about 4 million, government health officials said Sunday.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, also said on ABC’s “This Week” that the election of President Joe Biden to give 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office, is feasible.
And he rejects President Donald Trump’s false claim on Twitter that coronavirus deaths and cases in the US are highly exaggerated.
‘All you have to do … is go into the trenches, go to the hospitals, go to the intensive care units and see what happens. These are real numbers, real people and real deaths, “Fauci said on NBC’s” Meet the Press “.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. death toll has climbed past 350,000, the most of any country, while more than 20 million people nationwide are infected. States have reported record numbers over the past few days, and funeral homes in Southern California are being flooded with corpses.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the pandemic is getting worse in his city as the virus spreads rapidly within households and people let their hats down. “It’s a virus that preys on our weakness, and our exhaustion,” he said.
Experts believe that the actual number of deaths and infections in the US is much higher and that many cases have been overlooked, partly due to inadequate testing.
Fauci said he saw a glimmer of hope after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 a day, a clear increase in vaccinations. He says that brings the total to about 4 million.
He acknowledged that by the end of December, the US had not sent and distributed 20 million doses.
“There were some mistakes. This is understandable, “said Fauci. “We are not where we want to be, there is no doubt about that.”
But he expressed optimism that the momentum would increase by mid-January and that the US would eventually vaccinate 1 million people a day. Biden’s ‘goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days is a realistic goal,’ Fauci said.
Dr Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development and distribution team, told CBS that 17.5 million doses had been sent. According to Fauci, about 13 million of them have been distributed to clinics, hospitals and other places where they will be administered.
The goal of 20 million doses has not yet been reached because local health departments and medical facilities had to focus on testing to deal with an increase in cases, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said. And the holiday season meant health workers took time, he said.
‘I do not want anyone here to think I’m Pollyannies. There is what we have delivered, and we hope it will be translated into vaccinations. It did not happen the way we want it to, ‘Adams said on CNN’s’ State of the Union’.
On Sunday morning, Trump falsely tweeted that the outbreak was “very exaggerated” due to the “ridiculous” methodology of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also complained that Fauci was acknowledged by the news media that he had “done an incredible job” when Fauci was working for me and the Trump administration, and I was not given any credit for my work. ”
Fauci and others warn that an extra boom is likely due to holiday gatherings and the cold weather that keeps people indoors.
“It could and probably will worsen in the next few weeks, or at least maintain this very high level of infections and deaths we see,” Fauci said.
The concerns extend overseas, where British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that burdensome restrictions on closure in England were likely because a variant of the coronavirus infection rates had risen to their highest levels on record. Over the past six days, more than 50,000 new infections have been reported daily.
Scientists have said that the variant is up to 70% more contagious. Although Fauci has said that the US should do its own study, he wants to reassure viewers that British researchers believe that the mutated version is not more lethal or more likely to make people sicker and that vaccines are effective against it.
But Scott Gottlieb, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner who serves on the board of vaccine maker Pfizer, told CBS ‘Face the Nation’ that the variant ‘really creates more urgency to get this vaccine out faster and to get. more people are vaccinated. ”
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Associated Press authors contributed to this report worldwide.