New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) blamed Walgreens and the federal government for the slow launch of the vaccine in Garden State during an interview Wednesday night on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.
“The big reason is the federal program with CVS and Walgreens,” said Murphy. “They basically accumulated these doses, schedule visits to nursing homes, prolonged lives and are suffering from weight, especially Walgreens, and that is where most of the unused doses are.”
Murphy suggested to host Shepard Smith that Walgreens “put more bodies on the case” to solve the implantation problem.
On Tuesday, Murphy said New Jersey was effectively equipped to distribute the vaccine, but that all suppliers were missing “it’s the vaccine doses.” New Jersey has a population of approximately 8.882 million people and has distributed 898,550 vaccines, while administering only 432,220 of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Murphy pointed out that doses of the Covid vaccine are under state control and said they are reaching people more efficiently.
“You cannot find many doses in hospitals or other distribution points that we directly control, that are not being used,” said Murphy. “We are sending shots in all areas that we can control.”
Smith stepped back with Murphy and stressed that “people are losing” when it comes to the slow release of the vaccine. More than 123,000 Americans are hospitalized and an average of 3,000 people die every day, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The pandemic has killed more than 400,000 people since the start of the pandemic early last year. Murphy pointed to the federal government.
“There is no doubt that we have a huge imbalance between supply and demand, which starts, with all due respect, with the federal government, at least until today, having dropped the ball – promising too much and delivering poorly,” said Murphy. “So if Walgreens reaches 1,000, if CVS reaches 1,000 and we continue as a state to do what we are doing, which is to put vaccines in people’s arms, we will still have been disappointed by the feds.”
Murphy requested up to $ 20 billion in federal aid to help with Covid’s deficits. President Joe Biden said on Friday that he would use the Defense Production Act to increase the supply of vaccines during his first month in office.