White House Coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed back his prediction for when vaccines would be widely available Tuesday, saying that stage won’t arrive until May or even June.
Fauci had previously predicted that “virtually everybody” would be able to easily access a COVID-19 vaccine by April. Both timelines are longer than former President Donald Trump’s prediction that 700 million vaccines would be available to Americans by March. (RELATED: Amazon Offers To Help Biden Administration With Vaccine Effort After Sitting On The Sidelines For A Month)
After predicting April could be akin to open season where “virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN today “that timeline will probably be prolonged, maybe into mid-to-late May and early June.”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 16, 2021
The Biden administration has sought to administer 100 million vaccine doses in its first 100 days, enough doses to fully vaccinate 50 million Americans.
The administration announced in January that it was “working to purchase” an additional 100 million doses each from Pfizer and Moderna. That effort was announced successful Thursday, raising the total number of doses at the nation’s disposal to 600 million doses through the summer of 2021. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses per person, however, meaning the vault of doses is enough to cover 300 million Americans. Biden said those 600 million doses should be distributed by “the end of July.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also announced Tuesday that the Biden administration has also increased vaccine deliveries to states to 13.5 million doses per week.
WH says they inherited no vaccine distribution plan.
Now, @PressSec says Biden admin has increased amount of weekly vaccine doses going to states to 13.5M a week– a 57% increase since Jan 20. Biden admin is also doubling supply to pharmacies: 2M doses going to them this week.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) February 16, 2021