WASHINGTON – The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government does not know how much coronavirus vaccine the country has, a complication that adds to the already Herculean task before the Biden government.
“I cannot tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I cannot tell you, then I cannot tell the governors and I cannot tell the state health officials,” the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky told ” Fox News Sunday “.
“If they don’t know how much vaccine they are getting, not just this week, but next week and the week after, they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to deploy, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators they need, and they can’t figure out how many queries to make to the public, “said Walensky.
In a criticism of the Trump administration, Walensky said the lack of knowledge about the supply of the vaccine is indicative of the “challenges that remain”.
Read More: General choice of surgeon Biden says US competes to adapt to new Covid strains
President Joe Biden has set a goal to deliver 100 million Covid-19 vaccines in the first 100 days. The Biden government has been pressured repeatedly to find out if this target is ambitious enough, given the seriousness of the pandemic.
Walensky acknowledged that the United States must vaccinate people faster, but she said the country faces supply restrictions. Production will increase after the first 100 days, said Walensky, and the expected introduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also help to ease supply problems.
“We are really hoping to have more vaccines and that will increase the rate at which we can do vaccinations,” said Walensky.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain said the country also faces distribution problems because the Trump administration, which started the program, did not have a clear plan.
“The vaccine distribution process, especially outside nursing homes and hospitals, in the community as a whole did not really exist when we came to the White House,” Klain told MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday.
“So the process of putting this vaccine in the arms is the difficult process, it is where we are behind as a country and it is where we are focused on the Biden government in achieving this,” he added.
White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served in the Trump administration, said on Sunday that Biden’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days is not a final number.
“It’s really a floor and not a ceiling,” Fauci told CBS’s “Face The Nation” program. “It will be a challenge. I think it was a reasonable goal that was set. We always want to do better than the goal you set.”
Those 100 million injections will cover about 67 million people, said Fauci, some of whom will have received the two necessary doses, while others will have received only one dose. So far, the United States has administered nearly 22 million doses, far below federal targets.
The need to vaccinate as many people as possible takes on a new urgency as the coronavirus mutates. Fauci said that Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against new strains.
The choice of Biden’s general surgeon emphasized on Sunday that the US is in a race to adapt to the new variants.
“The virus is basically telling us that it will continue to change and we have to be ready for that,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy during an interview with ABC News “This Week”.
“So the bottom line is that we are in a race against these variants, the virus is going to change and it’s up to us to adapt and make sure we’re ahead,” said Murthy.
When asked if the United States is running out of time before a Covid variant that makes vaccines ineffective emerges, Walensky said Americans need to be inoculated when given the opportunity and adhere to mitigation strategies to prevent the virus from circulating.
“I would say that we are in a race all the time,” said Walensky. “The more viruses there are, the more viruses will replicate, the more likely we are to have mutations and variants.”