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WASHINGTON – The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government did not know how much coronavirus vaccine the country possessed, a complication that added to the already Herculean task facing the Biden administration.
“I can’t tell you how many vaccines we have, and if I can’t tell you, I can’t tell governors and I can’t tell public health officials,” the CDC director , Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday”.
“If they don’t know how many vaccines they’re getting not only this week, but next week and the week after, they can’t plan. They can’t determine how many sites to deploy, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments for the public, “Walensky said.
During a dig inside the Trump administration, Walensky said the lack of knowledge about vaccine supply pointed to “the challenges we have left.”
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President Joe Biden has set a goal of administering 100 million COVID-19 vaccines in his first 100 days. The Biden administration has repeatedly asked whether this goal is ambitious enough given the severity of the pandemic.
Walensky acknowledged that the United States needs to vaccinate people faster, but said the nation faces supply constraints. Production will increase after the first 100 days, Walensky said, and the planned introduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also help alleviate supply issues.
“We really hope that we get more vaccines and that will increase the rate at which we can do the vaccinations,” Walensky said.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain said the country also faces distribution issues because the Trump administration, which launched the program, did not have a clear plan.
“The process of distributing the vaccine, especially outside nursing homes and hospitals, to the community at large didn’t really exist when we got to the White House,” Klain told “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “from MSNBC.
“So the process of arming this vaccine is the difficult process, this is where we fall behind as a country and this is where we are focusing within the Biden administration to accelerate this process, ”he added.
White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci, who served in the Trump administration, said on Sunday that Biden’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days was not a definitive figure.
“It’s really a floor and not a ceiling,” Fauci told CBS’s “Face The Nation”. “It’s going to be a challenge. I think it was a reasonable goal that was set. We always want to do better than the goal you set for yourself.”
Those 100 million injections will cover around 67 million people, Fauci said, some of whom will have received the required two doses while others will have received only one dose. So far, the United States has administered almost 22 million doses, well below federal targets.
The need to vaccinate as many people as possible has taken on new urgency as the coronavirus mutates. Fauci said the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against the new strains.
Biden’s overall surgeon pick on Sunday underscored that the United States was in a race to adapt to the new variants.
“The virus is basically telling us that it’s going to keep changing and that we have to be ready for it,” Dr Vivek Murthy said in an interview with ABC News “This Week”.
“So at the end of the day we’re in a race against these variants, the virus is going to change and it’s up to us to adapt and make sure we stay ahead,” Murthy said.
When asked if the United States was in a race against time before a variant of Covid emerged that would make vaccines ineffective, Walensky said Americans should get vaccinated when they have one. ‘opportunity and adhere to mitigation strategies to prevent the virus from circulating.
“I would say we’ve always been in a race,” Walensky said. “The more viruses there are, the more virus that replicates, the more likely we are to have mutations and variants.”
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