Dr. Fauci says that strong winter storms delayed the distribution of 6 MILLION doses of the COVID-19 vaccine

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that Americans could wear masks until 2022, as he said the strong winter storms experienced across the country this week have delayed the distribution of six million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The White House chief medical advisor told NBC on Sunday: “The number was 6 million postponed doses.”

But the country’s leading infectious disease specialist said on Sunday that it was just a ‘temporary setback’, adding: ‘We can catch up. We got two million and we expect that by midweek we will have recovered.

Bad weather in the south and northeast earlier this week hampered vaccine deliveries and forced the cancellation of numerous vaccines across the country. The CDC admitted ‘widespread delays in shipments and deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines’.

In a large part of the country, including Texas, Georgia and Alabama, snowy and slippery weather has led to the closure of vaccination posts or delayed necessary shipments, with delays expected to continue for days.

President Joe Biden is trying to speed up the campaign to vaccinate most American adults, while local governments are calling for more doses to prevent the highly contagious disease that claimed nearly 500,000 lives in the United States.

Asked whether Americans should still wear masks next year, Fauci told CNN: “I think that may be the case,” adding that it depended on the level of the virus in communities and potential variants of the virus.

“Obviously, I think we will have a significant degree of normalcy in addition to the terrible burden that we all went through last year,” said Fauci.

He told Fox News that the United States will have 600 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by July. ‘By July we will have enough, we will have the 600 million doses we contracted,’ he added.

The United States administered 57 million doses of the COVID injection; 41 million people received their first vaccine, 16 million are fully vaccinated.

The sudden interruption of the vaccination campaign comes at a time when Saturday’s daily figures show that the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus continues to drop, with 58,000 registered. It is the smallest number in more than three and a half months.

There were 2,074 daily deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. The levels are now similar to those seen before the virus outbreaks last spring and summer.

While daily infection rates are dropping dramatically, thousands of Americans still die every day from the virus, and less than 15% of the US population has been vaccinated against it

The ice blast across much of the United States this week injected more confusion and frustration into the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

In Texas, Health officials said more than 100,000 first doses and 300,000 second doses that were due to be delivered this week were still waiting to be sent to the state.

Missed doses are expected to arrive during the first half of next week.

In Houston, some vaccination sites were reopened later this week. A new FEMA mass vaccination site at NRG Park in the city promises to vaccinate 42,000 people a week.

New York City was on Saturday approaching a dramatic slowdown in its vaccination launch, with just 1,000 doses on hand, after snowstorms caused delays in vaccine shipments.

‘Delayed shipments have paralyzed our entire vaccination effort. As of this morning, New York City has less than 1,000 first doses available, ‘ Avery Cohen, spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, wrote on Twitter.

This prompted local authorities to plead with vaccination sites to extend their opening hours and to need more consultations.

Regarding the vaccine effort, on Friday, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio explained that New York City had to postpone scheduling up to 35,000 appointments for the first dose of people because of the shortage .

Those whose appointments were not canceled over the weekend were still able to receive their photos.

New York State is also scheduling appointments for new mass vaccination sites that opened in Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday in a partnership with FEMA, according to the New York Times.

State officials said they received 40 percent of their vaccine distribution for the week and expected the rest to be distributed on Sunday.

The main reason for the slowdown came after bad weather disrupted two major vaccine delivery centers: the FedEx center in Memphis and a similar site run by UPS in Louisville, Kentucky, where the batches pass.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency noted that 2,000 other vaccination sites were in areas that suffered power outages.

A public health expert said the delays were unacceptable.

“Making vaccination centers take snowy days will only help things more than they already are,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety. ‘The virus does not take days of snow.’

Adalja said that those in charge of vaccination efforts must find ways to be more resistant to the climate, “just as postmen can deliver mail in hail or snow.” He suggested that clinics use better contingency plans. The goal, he said, should be ‘a continuous vaccine assembly line going into people’s arms’.

Jo Dohogne, from Bartlett, Tennessee, said she had scheduled two appointments this week to receive her second dose of the Modern vaccine, but both were canceled due to bad weather.

Dohogne, 75, who has multiple sclerosis, said she felt abandoned when the six-week mark for her second dose approached after her first vaccination on January 14.

‘I’m just stressed out … it’s like it’s been taking up my whole life,’ said Dohogne.

In Washington, COVID-19 White House coordinator Jeff Zients said that in places where vaccination sites have been closed, such as Texas, the government is encouraging locals to increase opening hours after they open.

“We want to make sure that, as we lose time in some states for people to pick up needles from guns, our partners do everything they can to recover the lost ground,” he said.

In southern Nevada, authorities reported that winter storms delayed the shipment of Modern vaccines scheduled to be administered as a second dose this week.

The US is vaccinating an average of 1.7 million Americans a day against COVID-19, compared to less than 1 million a month ago. New figures from the White House show a steady increase in the rate of vaccinations compared to President Joe Biden’s first month in office.

After Covid-19’s first death was announced in the United States in February 2020, it took about three months to pass the 100,000 mark, during a first wave that hit New York particularly hard.

But as the outbreak grew in the United States, the rate of death increased, with the death toll jumping from 400,000 in just over a month amid a peak fueled in part by holidays.

‘It’s terrible. It’s historic. We haven’t seen anything close to that for over a hundred years since the 1918 flu pandemic, ‘said Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the president of the United States, Joe Biden, on NBC’s’ Meet The Press’ program.

“It’s impressive when you look at the numbers, almost unbelievable, but it’s true,” he added, when the number of victims on the Johns Hopkins University tracking website reached 497,600.