Incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden’s administration plans to “fix” the “huge mess” they’ve inherited from the previous administration on coronavirus vaccine rollout.
Anchor Jake Tapper asked Klain about the vaccine’s slow rollout and the claim that the vaccine reserve stockpile does not exist.
“You’re inheriting kind of a mess here, right?” Tapper asked Klain. “I mean, the rollout of the vaccine has been awful.”
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“We’re inheriting a huge mess here, Jake, but we have a plan to fix it,” Klain responded. “The president-elect laid out that plan on Friday, five concrete steps to move forward, to make pace with the vaccination.”
Klain gave the vaccine makers “credit” for producing the vaccine in large numbers, but promised new methods to “speed up the delivery.”
“We think there are things we can do to speed up the delivery of that vaccine, and make that vaccine supply go farther,” he said. “For example, one thing the president-elect mentioned yesterday was using the Defense Production Act to ramp up the production of particular kinds of syringes that allow us to get six doses of the vaccine out of the vials instead of five and increase the vaccine supply by 20%.”
Biden recently asked Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief executive of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, to resign follow criticism of the slow vaccine rollout. (RELATED: Dr. Paul Offit Calls For ‘Mass Vaccination Events’ To Speed Up Distribution)
Klain expressed his belief that the incoming administration can still meet the goal of “100 million shots in 100 days.” Currently, only around 12 million doses have been given so far, including 1,384,963 in long-term care facilities.