Watch: Biden says the U.S. bought ‘enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate all Americans’
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The Biden administration on Thursday bought 200 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna.
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This marks a 50% increase in the supply available in the United States, bringing the total to 600 million doses.
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Biden said Trump “did not ask for enough vaccines” during his term.
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Days after taking office, President Joe Biden said his government planned to buy another 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine – 100 million from Pfizer and 100 million from Moderna. That purchase was completed on Thursday, said the president, marking a 50% increase in the country’s total vaccine supply.
The United States has already ordered 600 million total doses from companies – enough to vaccinate 300 million Americans. This gives the country sufficient doses for its entire adult population: around 255 million people.
The new supply will not be delivered until the end of July, which means it will help prevent a shortage of vaccines in the future, but it will not speed up the pace of vaccinations.
Speaking at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on Thursday, Biden said he had inherited a vaccination program that was “much worse off” than his team had predicted.
“My predecessor, to be quite frank, did not do his job in preparing for the enormous challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans,” said Biden. “He did not ask for enough vaccines. He did not mobilize enough people to administer the vaccines.”
In its first three weeks in office, the Biden government increased the weekly supply of vaccines to states by almost 30%, the president said. About 34.7 million people in the United States received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccines.
“Millions of Americans will be vaccinated in February of what the previous government was planning to do,” said Biden.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently told “Today” that he expects the United States to reach the “hunting season” – when all adults have access to coronavirus vaccines – in April .
As new variants spread, public health experts press for rapid vaccinations
Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 – the highest efficacy rates of any coronavirus injected to date.
Both shots rely on messenger RNA (mRNA) to send a coded message to the body that triggers an immune response. Moderna’s shot was allowed for people over 18, while Pfizer’s shot was allowed for people over 16.
“The new mRNA technology – which is absolutely the Rolls Royce, the cutting edge vaccines you saw coming out,” said Dr. Johan Bester, director of bioethics at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, Las Vegas Insider.
But companies are expected to deliver only 220 million doses in total to the United States by the end of March. That is enough to vaccinate 110 million people – only 42% of those who are currently eligible to receive their vaccines.
Public health experts are optimistic that vaccinations can be accelerated if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus injection. The company last week asked U.S. regulators to give its vaccine an emergency OK. An FDA advisory committee will meet to discuss the request on February 26, and the decision could be given the green light a few days later.
Experts insist that people be vaccinated as soon as possible, due to the spread of new, more infectious variants like B.1.351, a coronavirus strain first identified in South Africa. Preliminary research found that B.1.351 could partially escape the protection offered by current vaccines.
“If I were introduced to any of the available vaccines, and you could get the other one in a month, I would choose the one in front of you now,” Dr. Becky Smith, an infectious disease specialist at Duke Health, said Insider. “You just don’t want to get COVID and they are all super effective.”
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