WASHINGTON – The Biden government said on Thursday that it had secured another 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, enough to vaccinate every American adult, but President Biden warned that logistical barriers would most likely mean many Americans would not be vaccinated against the end of summer.
The additional doses are a 50 percent increase in vaccine and give the administration the amount of doses that Mr. Biden said last month that it should cover 300 million people by the end of the summer. But it will still be difficult to get those shots in people’s arms. Both vaccines are two doses, with a space of three and four weeks. Mr. Biden regrets the ‘huge’ logistical challenge he faced during an appearance at the National Institutes of Health. He also expressed open frustration over the previous government.
“It’s one thing to have the vaccine,” he said. Biden said. “It’s a different thing to have vaccinations.”
The Department of Health and Human Services said Pfizer and Moderna would each provide 300 million doses in “regular increments” by the end of July.
The administration is looking at a step-by-step process. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top expert on infectious diseases, predicted on Thursday morning that any American could start looking for a vaccine in an ‘open season’ as early as April, which would expand availability beyond priority categories.
“By the time we are in April, I will call it ‘open season’ for a better wording,” said dr. Fauci said in an interview with NBC’s “Today.” “Virtually anyone and everyone in any category can start vaccinating.”
But the problem is getting doses for people who are not looking for it easily.
Mr. Biden cautiously avoided his White House by criticizing his predecessor, but on Thursday he directly targeted Donald J. Trump for failing to create a mass vaccination process, he said. The president, who said he had promised to speak openly with Americans about the challenges of the pandemic, told Mr. Trump blamed that he created an important one by not overseeing the creation of a streamlined vaccine distribution program. “The vaccine program was in a much worse condition than my team and I expected,” he said. Biden said.
“While scientists have done their job of discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I will be very blunt about it – did not do his job to prepare for the great challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” he said. Bid added.
“It was a big mess,” he said. “It’s going to take time to get right, to be blunt with you.”
Health officials in the Trump administration pushed back the proposals, pointing to hundreds of briefings presented by Department of Health and Human Services officials to the incoming health team, including on the allocation and distribution of vaccines.
The highly decentralized plans to distribute and administer the vaccines, and once the state and local health departments had authority once doses were delivered, were developed with career staff at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the Department of Defense.
Officials involved in the last government’s distribution plans said late last year that outside the first few weeks, when they carefully managed the flow of second-dose reserves, they always planned to send out doses as they were available. , and that they never intended to store doses.
The agreement for 200 million additional doses of coronavirus vaccine helps to fulfill a promise that Mr. Biden made in January to increase supply to cover more of the population. He then said the government was closing the deal with the two manufacturers as part of its larger promise that about 300 million Americans could receive a dose of the vaccine by the end of the summer or early fall.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said his government “has now bought enough vaccine to vaccinate all Americans.”
Dr Nicole Lurie, who was the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama, said that the reluctance of vaccines could affect how soon some Americans who want to be vaccinated, but that more supply means more work to vaccines to get people.
“We will reach more and more of the population, and more of the population will have to put in extra effort to reach,” she said. ‘You have to hope that the public still has a huge demand for vaccines, as the supply is still opening up. This is really the unknown. ”
The government has already obtained 400 million doses of the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the two companies approved for emergency distribution – doses expected by the end of June. Mr. Biden said Thursday that the companies will deliver it by the end of May.
A third manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its single-dose vaccine for emergency use, a decision that can be made by the end of the month and the distribution of the vaccine the first week in March. . But the company is still trying to show that it can manufacture the vaccine on a large-scale basis at its Baltimore plant.
Federal officials have so far refused to say how much of the vaccine will be ready for distribution if it exceeds regulatory barriers, but warn them not to expect a flood of new doses from Johnson & Johnson soon.
“We have not realized that the level of manufacturing allows us to have as much vaccine as we think we should get out of the gate,” said Andy Slavitt, a senior White House pandemic adviser.
So far, only about 10 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine. The CDC said Thursday that about 34.7 million people had received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, including about 11.2 million people who had been fully vaccinated.
The rate of vaccinations has been steadily increasing over the past few weeks. The number of daily shots now averages about 1.5 million, up from 1.1 million two weeks ago. At this rate, Mr. Biden easily fulfills his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.
State and federal health officials say the biggest obstacle to vaccinating more people at this point is the lack of supply. The administration was looking for any possible way to speed up production, including one possible breakthrough in which Moderna would fill his vials with more doses, and possibly get millions more doses sooner.
But Mr. Biden faces a variety of years of production constraints, including limited open space around the world to make more vaccines, and the delicate and complex nature of vaccine production.
White House officials have pointed out what they claim their jobs increase the weekly supply of vaccines by 28 percent. But the doses are the result of an expected increase in manufacturing.
Unlike the previous government, the White House’s pandemic team briefed governors on the expected offer in three weeks, so health departments will know better how to plan ahead.
And they followed a much more aggressive approach with the use of federal resources to get gunshots. The White House announced this week that it is setting up five new vaccination centers, including three in Texas and two in New York specifically aimed at vaccinating people of color. The government also said it plans to send one million doses of vaccine a week to federal community health centers in suburban neighborhoods. A new federal vaccination program for pharmacies began this week.
And on Friday, the government announced that it was sending more than 1,000 troops to active service to Covid-19 vaccination centers across the country run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said it hopes to build about 100 vaccination sites nationwide this month and that they will spend $ 1 billion on vaccination measures, including municipal vaccination sites.
Sharon LaFraniere and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contribution made.