The Biden government is unsure about the location of 20 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine that were sent to the states, according to a new report.
The CDC currently claims to have sent nearly 50 million doses to the states, but only slightly more than 31.1 million went into people’s arms.
But once the doses are sent by the feds, it is up to the states to track their whereabouts, the Politico said.
Biden’s team is still trying to locate the remaining 20 million.
About 10 percent of that difference, or 2 million doses, is missing because of state reporting delays, Biden’s team believes – meaning the rest may be in warehouses, freezers or in transit on the complex network of distribution between the federal government and the states.
Biden – whose team has already been criticized for not being able to say how many shots the federal government has in hand – insisted that the vaccine program left by the Trump administration “is in a worse state than we anticipated or expected”.
Missing doses can substantially undermine your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days.
“It’s Mike Tyson’s quote: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,'” a person familiar with the vaccine program told Politico. “They are planning. They are competent. It’s just the weight of everything when you sit in that chair. It’s heavy.”
A member of the transition team argued that Biden officials did not have access to all data during the transfer from the previous government.
“No one had a complete view,” Julie Morita, a member of Biden’s transition team, told the channel.
“The plans that were being made were based on the assumption that more information would be available and would be revealed as soon as they reached the White House.”