Biden said he was optimistic that the vaccine would be readily available to those who want it sometime in the spring.
“We are trying to get a minimum of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days and move in the direction that we will be well beyond that in the next 100 days, so that we can reach the point where we will achieve collective immunity in the country of more than 300 million people” , he said.
Biden’s nominee for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, said on Sunday that the government had started looking beyond its initial goal of 100 million vaccines.
“This is a floor; it’s not a roof, ”said Murthy on ABC’s“ This Week ”. “It is also a goal that reflects the reality of what we face, what can go right, but also what can go wrong.”
At the end of the term of former President Donald Trump, the national rate hovered around the million-dose-a-day mark, state and local authorities they fear that the supply is showing signs of unsustainability that may prevent them from meeting demand as they begin to expand eligibility to tens of millions of people.
Some of Biden’s top health advisers have expressed similar concerns about supply as they wrap their heads around the government’s first major test and, intermittently, criticize their predecessors because of the precarious state of implantation the president has assumed.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday that the situation was “much worse than we could have imagined”.
Biden’s director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, said on “Fox News Sunday” that supply was the “most limiting constraint” at the moment, but that the hope was that it would be resolved by the end of this year. .
The focus on the vaccination effort has intensified as at least two variants of the virus have begun to heighten fear among medical experts. One strain, identified in the UK, appears to be more transmissible – and potentially more deadlyAnthony Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease expert, said on Monday – while a strain of the virus found in South Africa has shown resistance to antibody treatments.
Biden is increasing travel restrictions, including banning the majority of non-American citizens from South Africa and several other countries, in an effort to keep coronavirus variant strains under control.