Residents receive the Moderna vaccine in Delray Beach, Florida.
Photographer: Saul Martinez / Bloomberg
Photographer: Saul Martinez / Bloomberg
The US government’s chief infectious disease physician said the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines is picking up speed and could be fully ready in a week or more.
“It’s just trying to start a massive vaccine program and start on the right foot. The important thing is to see what’s going on next week, a week and a half, ”said Anthony Fauci on ABC’s“ This Week ”program.
In CNN’s “State of the Union”, surgeon general Jerome Adams said the initial vaccination program was superimposed on an increase in coronavirus cases, which has stressed health care resources in many areas and during the holiday season.
Follow our Covid-19 vaccine tracker: More than 12 million vaccines administered
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that in the past 72 hours, about 1.5 million doses of vaccine have been administered, or about 500,000 a day, a substantial increase in pace.
“We are not where we want to be, no doubt, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate,” he said on ABC.
Operation Warp Speed, a federal effort to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine, has failed to meet projections of how quickly people will be inoculated. Two vaccines have been approved for use in the USA
Strained health agencies
Authorities blamed delays in inoculating a delicate vaccine with complex storage requirements, uncertainty about the delivery of doses and strain at local health agencies that already face historic challenges.
Moncef Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed’s top scientific advisor, said the effort had been successful in transporting vaccines to the sites, but states need to ask “a specific question” if they need help getting the inoculation into people’s arms.
“We are ready to help with any specific request,” he said on CBS. “We have an agreement with CVS and Walgreens and we are starting to send vaccines to these locations as allocated by the states – this is really the key point.”
Asked when there will be data on whether the virus is transmissible even after a person has received the first dose of the vaccine, Slaoui said the studies will be based on observation data, which will not be available until late spring.
Multiple Stages
At NBC, Fauci noticed the “multiple stages” involved, from allocation to staging and distribution, and finally putting the shots to the guns.
Although the goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020 has not been achieved, many doses must be sent at least by the end of the first week of January, said Fauci.
About 4.28 million doses have been administered through Jan. 2, according to Bloomberg News vaccine tracker.
The number of cases in the USA has exceeded 20 million, with more than 1 million in New York state alone. Deaths in the United States attributed to the coronavirus exceeded 350,000 on Saturday.
President Donald Trump on Sunday called cases and deaths in the United States “very exaggerated” in a tweet criticizing the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The numbers are real,” said Fauci. “These are real numbers, real people and real deaths.” On CNN, Adams said he “had no reason to doubt these numbers.”
The state of New York surpassed 1 million cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, after a dark year in which more than 30,000 of its residents died of the virus.
More than a third of the state’s total cases were reported in December, when cold weather pushed people into the home, holidays increased social gatherings and residents grew tired of restrictions.
“We need to fold the things we talk about all the time,” especially wearing masks, distancing yourself from society and avoiding “meeting” environments, especially indoors, said Fauci at NBC.
The current leap in cases “was predictable” due to travel and socializing during holidays, he said.
Asked about the newest and most infectious Covid-19 strain that hit the United States and other parts of the world from the UK, Fauci repeated his advice since the beginning of the pandemic: “The best way to combat this is to take health measures that prevent the spread. “
(Updates with Warp Speed advisor comments in the eighth paragraph.)