WILMINGTON (US) – US President-elect Joe Biden is slated to unveil his plan to bolster vaccinations against the pandemic on Friday. This comes as he prepares to assume office amid surging cases of the coronavirus and an early roll-out by the administration of outgoing president Donald Trump, which he termed a “dismal failure.”
Biden has pledged to take more serious measures to stem the spread of the virus than his predecessor and get 100 million shots of the vaccine administered to Americans during his first 100 days in office.
“The vaccines offer so much hope … but the vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure thus far,” Biden said late on Thursday when he unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan to bolster the pummelled economy.
When he takes office on Wednesday, Biden is slated to reveal more plans to stem the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 385,000 people in the US, infecting almost 7% of the population.
While announcing his stimulus package, which also has $20 billion for vaccine distribution and $50 billion for COVID testing, the President-elect vowed to “move heaven and earth” to have more Americans inoculated.
“This will be one of the most challenging operational efforts we’ve ever undertaken as a nation,” Biden said.
Initially, the Trump administration had planned to give vaccine doses to 20 million people by the end of last year. But it fell short of that target.
As of Thursday, only 11.1 million coronavirus shots have been administered out of more than 30 million doses handed out to states, said data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With federal officials leaving the distribution of shots to states, there are big differences in vaccination rates even as daily infections hit record highs.