Despite progress, it will be ‘months’ before anyone who wants a vaccine can get one, task force says

by



[ad_1]

Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to the White House Covid-19 response team, said it will be “months before anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.”

The administration is currently facing two constraining factors on vaccine distribution: a sufficiently rapid supply and the ability to administer the vaccines once they are produced and at the distribution sites, he said.

President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that most American adults will have access to a vaccine by the end of the summer. The White House is currently on track to meet its vaccination target of 100 million vaccines in Biden’s first 100 days, Slavitt said, but added that “any stock (of vaccines) that may have existed does not exist. more”.

The Biden administration is working to speed up its vaccine distribution and announced on Tuesday it would increase its weekly allowance by 16%.

Faced with criticism from the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, a Republican, over the number of doses made available, Slavitt blamed the previous administration.

“We hear you, Governor Hogan, and we couldn’t agree more,” Slavitt said.

“I would be happy to tell you that we have inherited a situation where there were stocks and stocks of vaccines. This is not the case. And it’s our job to put ourselves at the same level, at the both with the governors and with the public, ”he said. .

Slavitt said the administration maintains “a two to three day continuous inventory of supply that we can use to fill any production shortfalls and to ensure that we are making deliveries as planned.”

In its final days, Trump administration officials conceded that despite early indications that second doses of the vaccine were being held in reserve, there was in fact no stock.
The briefing also addressed the spread of new variants of the coronavirus that are more contagious and threaten to add stress to an already overwhelmed health system, the director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. Dr Rochelle Walensky.

“I also know that there are concerns about mutating various viruses, and we always expected variants to appear, and we looked for them,” Walensky said.

“The variants that have been identified recently seem to spread more easily. They are more transmissible, which can lead to an increase in the number of cases and increased stress on our already overtaxed system,” Walensky added.

The briefing unfortunately started on Wednesday with multiple technical difficulties. The administration has repeatedly touted its transparency amid the massive pandemic control endeavor, but the briefing, which was conducted virtually via Zoom, had multiple audiovisual issues.

When the chief of Covid-19, Jeff Zients, started the call, his audio was audible intermittently.

Walensky also had issues with his muted line.

“Rochelle? Rochelle? someone asked off camera.

Dr Anthony Fauci spoke for almost a full minute while he was mute, at that point the audio was turned on and he was made aware of the problem, which continued intermittently with other officials until the briefing is concluded.

The briefing included an update to the U.S. coronavirus death forecast from Walensky, who said the CDC’s overall forecast now predicted there will be 479,000 to 514,000 deaths by February 20.

Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections in a few weeks. The previous ensemble forecast, released on January 20, predicted up to 508,000 coronavirus deaths by February 13.

At least 425,406 people have already died from Covid-19 in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

And part of the briefing was dedicated to stressing that equitable distribution of medical care and vaccines is key to the administration’s national coronavirus plan, a priority among recent research that has shown communities of color are only not vaccinated in proportion to their share of the population. .

“Equity is absolutely a fundamental part of our national plan,” said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the Covid-19 health equity working group, during the virtual briefing.

She said in addition to the “moral imperative” of ensuring that those hardest hit by the pandemic are able to stay safe, the United States “cannot beat this virus without ensuring that we are executing a plan that works for all communities ”.

This story has been updated to include additional reports from the briefing.

CNN’s Jason Hoffman and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.

[ad_2]

Source link