General apologizes for vaccine shipment

The Army general in charge of getting CO - VID-19 vaccines across the United States apologized on Saturday for “miscommunication” with states over the number of doses to be delivered in the early stages of distribution.

“I failed. I’m adjusting. I am fixing and we will move forward from there,” Gen. Gustave Perna told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Perna’s remarks came a day after a second vaccine was added in the fight against COVID-19, which ha s k illed more than 312,000 people in the U. S. Governors in more than a dozen states have said the federal government has told them that next week’s shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be less than originally projected.

Perna acknowledged the criticism and accepted blame.

“I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication,” he said. “I know that’s not done much these days. But I am responsible. ... This is a Herculean effort and we are not perfect.”

T he general said he made mistakes by citing numbers of doses that he believed would be ready.

“I am the one who approved forecast sheets.

I’m the one who approved allocations,” Perna said. “There is no problem with the process. There is no problem with the Pfizer vaccine. There is no problem with the Moderna vaccine.”

There’s a distinction between manufactured vaccine and doses that are ready to be released. The finished product must undergo “rigorous quality control and sterility tests,” which can take up to a month, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The Food and Drug Administration then must receive a certificate of analysis 48 hours before the manufacturer ships a batch, the government said.