President Biden’s coronavirus team is blaming the Trump administration for what it is calling a lack of planning in the government’s response to COVID-19, which is now forcing authorities to step up federal action.
“What we are inheriting is much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients
Jeff ZientsBiden seeks to immediately change the Trump-era Biden page to order agencies to use the Defense Production Act to fight the coronavirus Three COVID-19 vaccines under final-stage review for WHO emergency approval. MORE, Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, said in a call with reporters.
Biden is scheduled to take several executive actions on Thursday, including agencies directing to make more aggressive use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to direct companies to increase the manufacture of test supplies, vaccines and protective equipment for Health professionals.
Biden officials said they had identified “12 immediate supply shortages” in the areas they would work to resolve.
Old President Trump
Donald TrumpClinton, Bush and Obama reflect on the peaceful transition of power on the day of Biden’s inauguration The Republican brothers in Arizona say he is “at least partially guilty” for the violence on Capitol Hill. Biden reverses Trump freeze at 0.4 billion in funds MORE he was particularly unrelated to the response to the coronavirus towards the end of his presidency, by focusing on trying to overturn the election results. His administration since the beginning of the pandemic transferred many of the responsibilities to the states, including the final stage of vaccine distribution: obtaining vaccines.
The Biden team’s criticisms of the Trump administration come as they suppress any expectation that the situation will reverse immediately.
The lack of visibility of vaccine allocation efforts during the transition period forced the new government to try to quickly understand how things are going with the government’s response to the pandemic, officials said.
“Allocation and supply are critical areas where we unfortunately did not have a lot of visibility and we are focusing on that right away,” said Zients.
He said Biden’s team does not have exact supply projections from vaccine manufacturers, as well as knowing that there is sufficient supply for the government’s goal of 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days.
“We also know that we need to increase the offer, which is why you are hearing about all this focus on DPA and working closely with manufacturers,” said Zients.
The Biden government plans to use the Federal Emergency Management Agency to establish federally administered vaccination sites, with a target of 100 sites next month.
The authorities also intend to improve communication with states that have complained that it is difficult for them to plan their vaccine distribution efforts without clear messages from the federal government about how many doses of vaccine will be allocated and when.
“We have heard repeatedly from local governors and leaders that they simply do not know what supply is coming and cannot plan,” said Zients. “We will be absolutely in the next few days [work] to put our arms around what’s going on. “