New CDC director says Biden administration grapples with lack of vaccine data

The newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government remains in the dark about how much vaccine is currently available and warned that states like New York would not be able to quickly replenish its limited supply .

“One of the biggest problems right now is that I can’t tell you how many vaccines we have, and if I can’t tell you, then I can’t tell the governors and I can’t not tell public health officials, “Dr Rochelle Walensky told Fox News Sunday”.

Walensky added that the government “doesn’t have as many doses as we would like now for states like New York. [or] for other states that claim to be short of vaccines. “

As President Joe Biden pledges to distribute 100 million Covid-19 vaccines in his first 100 days, Walensky said “supply will likely be the most limiting constraint from the start.”

“We really hope that after these first 100 days we will have a lot more production,” she added.

The Biden administration last week released its comprehensive plan to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, including an increase in the number of vaccination sites and accelerated vaccine production. The virus has claimed the lives of more than 418,000 Americans and infected more than 25 million across the United States, according to an NBC News tracker.

According to Bloomberg’s vaccine distribution tracker, the United States recently hit a rate of 1 million immunizations per day. The CDC reports that more than 20.5 million doses were administered across the country on Saturday – about half of what states have on hand. The vast majority of those who were vaccinated received only the first of two doses needed.

An NBC News poll found that only 11 percent of registered voters say the vaccination process is going “very well”, and 31 percent say it is going “fairly well.” Of those who say the deployment did not go well, 64 percent place the blame primarily on the federal government.

In an interview with CBS “Face the Nation” broadcast on Sunday, Dr Deborah Birx – who coordinated Trump’s Covid-19 response to the White House – said the former president had “no team, full team. time in the White House working on the coronavirus. “

Xavier Becerra, Biden’s candidate for head of the Department of Health and Human Services, was asked Sunday in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” whether Biden’s team sought to reduce vaccine distribution expectations so that success is seen as success.

“Well, if the plane dives like that, you’re definitely not going to see it appear like this overnight,” he said. “What you’re trying to do is get the plane to be like that to straighten up, and then go like that. In three – in 100 days, it’s extremely important to get 100 shots of the vaccine, 100 million vaccines It’s ambitious, it’s bold, it’s doable. We have to do it. But we have to recognize that we are doing it while the plane is on a dive like this.

And in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the goal of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of Biden’s administration was “bold” and “ambitious” but “we must continue after this.”

“It’s our first goal, it’s not our end goal, it’s not the end point, it’s just a metric that Americans can look at and measure how we are doing,” he said. .