President Biden on Thursday emphasized the importance of wearing masks by at least 2022 to save lives – despite declaring that the United States will have enough vaccine supplies by summer to inoculate 300 million Americans.
The president told reporters during a visit to the National Institutes of Health complex that he would not remove the mask, although he was more than 10 feet away from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the NIH Director, Dr. Francis Collins.
“You know that wearing this mask over the next year here can save lives – a significant number of lives,” said Biden. “And then I apologize if you don’t hear me as clearly as you do, maybe you should.”
Biden warned that the country is still “facing this pandemic” with new highly contagious variants spreading.
“January 2021 was the deadliest month we have had. We have lost more than 100,000 to 100,000 of our fellow citizens. We are on our way to cross 500,000 dead Americans next month, ”he said.
“The new emerging varieties create immense challenges, and masking is still the easiest thing to do to save lives. But we need everyone to dress up.
“I know it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s a patriotic responsibility. We are in the middle of a war with this virus. It is a patriotic responsibility – not just if you care about your family, if you care about your fellow Americans. “
However, with more than 26 million jabs delivered in Biden’s first three weeks in office, the United States is on track to exceed its goal of administering 100 million doses in its first 100 days.
“Later this afternoon, we signed the final contracts for another 100 million Modern vaccines and 100 million Pfizer vaccines. And we can also anticipate delivery dates with another 200 million vaccines by the end of July – faster than we expected, ”said the president on Thursday.
“This means that we are now on track to have enough supplies for 300 million Americans by the end of July.”
Biden also said that the government has already provided $ 3 billion to 37 states, territories and tribes to strengthen existing vaccination centers and open more centers to administer vaccines.
“Another point of progress is that we are implementing more vaccinators. We are now allowing retired doctors and nurses to come back and administer injections, ”said the president.
“We are implementing federal vaccinators and, in the past three weeks, we have put hundreds of new vaccinators in the field and we are aligning thousands more.”
The “ultimate goal” is “to defeat COVID-19,” said the president.