• Biden marks 50M vaccinations, defends rollout,
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday marked the 50 millionth COVID-19 vaccine administered in the United States by urging the nation to stay vigilant as he defended the sometimes rocky rollout of his vaccine initiative, saying he was well into “cleaning the mess left us” by his predecessor.
The halfway mark to Mr. Biden’s stated goal of 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days comes just after one month into his presidency, a much faster pace than the administration had first publicly set. But Mr. Biden also cautioned against complacency and told Americans not to let down their guard.
“At first, critics said that goal was too ambitious, no one could do that. Then they said it was too small,” Mr. Biden said of his 100 million shots promise. “Today, I’m here to report, we’re halfway there. ... That’s weeks ahead of schedule, even with the setbacks we faced in the recent winter storms.”
Still, the pace of a million vaccines a day had almost been reached by the time Mr. Biden took office, making his promise less far-reaching than it at first appeared.
The Trump administration, Mr. Biden asserted, left him with no broad strategy to vaccinate every American. He noted that the 12 million shots administered during this week were double the 6 million shots in President Donald Trump’s last week in office.
Also on Thursday, U.S. regulators started allowing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to be shipped and stored at lessfrigid temperatures, which should ease distribution and administration of one of the two vaccines authorized for
emergency use in the U.S.
The Food and Drug Administration said it’s allowing the additional option after reviewing new data from New Yorkbased Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech.
The FDA said the vaccine, which is shipped in frozen vials, now can be transported and stored for up to two weeks at the temperatures of freezers commonly found in pharmacies. That’s after
Pfizer provided the FDA with data on Feb. 19 that showed its vaccine remains stable for up to two weeks at those standard freezer temperatures.
Until now, the vaccine was required to be kept at ultracold temperatures — between minus 112 degrees and minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit — so Pfizer ships the vials in a special thermal container packed with dry ice to maintain that temperature range.
That requirement meant vaccination sites had to either obtain expensive ultra-cold freezers, keep adding dry ice to the shipping container to keep to the correct temperature range, or administer all the doses in each shipment quickly so none spoiled.
The task of vaccinating millions of Americans, Mr. Biden said, is the “greatest operational challenge this country has ever undertaken.” He added that his administration has worked to boost the number of people available to administer the doses, including by bringing doctors and nurses out of retirement. His team, Mr. Biden said, also has “fixed the problem” of the supply of vaccines.
He repeated multiple times that he was not taking a “victory lap” Thursday. That reflected the sober and somber tone toward the pandemic that Mr. Biden and his aides have taken since the start of his presidency, despite some recent good news that suggests the spread of the virus in the United States was slowing somewhat.
“COVID cases and hospitalizations are coming down, but I need to be honest with you: Cases and hospitalizations could go back up with the new variants as they emerge,” Mr. Biden said. “This is not a time to relax. We must keep washing our hands, stay socially distant and for God’s sake — for God’s sake — wear a mask.”
The president also reeled off a list of reasons he said the vaccination campaign is not going faster: the purported lack of a plan by his predecessor, the recent winter storms that shellacked Texas and other states, and an initial shortage in supply.
“The story of this vaccination campaign is like the story of everything hard and new America does — some confusion, setbacks at the start, and then, if we do the right things, we have the right plan to get things moving,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s what we’re seeing right now.”
Mr. Biden stressed that he could not “give you a date” on when life in the U.S. would return to normalcy, but that “we’ll work as hard as we can to make that day come as soon as possible.”