National Review
Biden says ‘we didn’t have’ a COVID vaccine when he took office
President Biden said at one point during a CNN city hall on Tuesday that his government took office without available coronavirus vaccines. Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 21, and the second dose in January. When discussing the issue of vaccine supply during the city hall, Biden initially said there were 50 million doses available when he took office. President Biden said that Covid-19 vaccines will be widely available to the general public in late July. “By the end of July, we will have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate all Americans.” #BidenTownHall https://t.co/K3sxmUXFdG pic.twitter.com/xTkje54Aqx – CNN (@CNN) February 17, 2021 “We arrived at the post, there were only 50 million doses available. By the end of July, we will have more than 600 million doses ”, said Biden to the presenter Anderson Cooper. However, Biden also said, “We went into the office and found … there was nothing in the refrigerator, figuratively and literally speaking, and there were 10 million doses a day available.” (The initial goal of the Biden government was to administer 1 million doses of vaccine per day, a pace already established at the time the president was installed.) “It is one thing to have the vaccine, which we did not have when we took office, but” you also need “a vaccinator,” Biden later told Cooper, when asked about the logistics of sending vaccines to Americans. The US is currently administering doses of coronavirus vaccine at an average of seven million 1.7 million a day, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. The pace of vaccinations has steadily increased since December 15, when a New York City nurse received her first injection outside a clinical trial. The Biden administration downplayed the efforts of the previous administration in assisting the development and distribution of COVID vaccines. Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden administration was “starting from scratch” in vaccine production in an interview with Axios over the weekend, contradicting Dr. Fauci, who said in January “we are certainly not starting from scratch because there are ongoing activities in distribution. In addition, Biden addressed the halt to the reopening of school districts in the United States during City Hall, calling reports that his government planned to open schools one day a week as a communication error. Biden contradicted White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said last week that the government hoped to open schools “at least one day a week in most schools by the 100th day”. Psaki later said that the government has committed to opening schools five days a week, on condition that coronavirus mitigation measures are in place. “Your administration has set a goal to open most schools in the first 100 days. Now you are saying that this means that these schools can only be open at least one day a week, ”said Cooper to Biden. “This is not true. It was a communication error,” said Biden, adding that his government’s goal was to open elementary schools to the eighth grade, five days a week.