FILE PHOTO: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks during a televised speech on the current economic and health crises at The Queen Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., January 14, 2021. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
More than a month into the United States’ vaccination campaign, around 11 million Americans have been vaccinated – far short of the Trump administration’s initial goal of 20 million people by the end of 2020. Federal officials largely left states to manage distribution, resulting in wide variations in vaccination rates even as daily deaths hit new records.
“We’re at the peak of the surge of the epidemic and we’re in a race against time against these new variants. I think the game’s changed in terms of what the strategy needs to be,” Scott Gottlieb, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Pfizer Inc board member, said in an interview. Pfizer and BioNTech SE and Moderna make the two vaccines being distributed in the United States.
This week, the Trump administration said they would release millions of doses they had held back for second shots, a move Biden previously indicated he also favored. It encouraged states to expand access to people 65 and older or with certain medical conditions. “We have to move vaccination into the community and nearer to patients with mass vaccination sites and community vaccination units which will allow people to more easily access the vaccine,” said Ames Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Riding President Trump's coattails .
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