President-elect Joe Biden is taking a swing at President Donald Trump for failing to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine at a quicker pace.
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind, far behind. We’re grateful to the companies, the doctors, the scientists, the researchers the clinical trial participants, and Operation Warp Speed for developing the vaccines quickly,” Biden said while delivering remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday.
He added, “But as I have long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should.”
Biden noted a few weeks ago, the Trump administration indicated 20 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of December. He argued only a few million Americans have been vaccinated thus far.
“If it continues to move as it is now, it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people,” Biden continued.
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"The Trump administration's plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind," President-elect Biden says as Trump admin. fails to vaccinate 20M people by end of year.
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 29, 2020
"If it continues to move as it is now, it's going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people." pic.twitter.com/zN1PisCxVM
Biden vowed 100 million shots of the vaccine would be administered by the end of his first 100 days in office.
“If Congress provides the funding, we’d be able to meet this incredible goal. It would take ramping up five to six times the current pace to 1 million shots a day,” Biden said.
He went on, “But even with that improvement, even if we boost the speed of vaccinations to 1 million shots a day, it will still take months to have the majority of the United States population vaccinated.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Tuesday, Operation Warp Speed fell short of its goal to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of December.
“We certainly are not at the numbers we wanted to be at the end of December,” Fauci said.
He continued, “I believe that as we get into January, we are going to see an increase in the momentum which, I hope, allows us to catch up to the projected pace that we had spoken about a month or two ago when we were talking about the planned rollout of the vaccinations.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 2.1 million Americans have been vaccinated.
