The Day

Biden: Trump could delay distributi­on of vaccine by weeks or months.

- By DAVE GOLDINER

President- elect Joe Biden said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat could delay distributi­on of coronaviru­s vaccines by “weeks or months.”

As Trump digs in his heels,

Biden said his incoming team is hamstrung by the administra­tion’s refusal to coordinate with those who will be in charge of fighting the pandemic and planning to roll out millions of doses of vaccines.

“We’re going to be behind by weeks or months,” Biden said. “That’s the only slowdown we have.”

Biden spoke from his transition headquarte­rs in Delaware where he held a virtual roundtable with health care leaders over the nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases.

He said his incoming team needs access to current officials and informatio­n about stockpiles of equipment to start planning its response.

Biden’s administra­tion will bear the burden of distributi­ng hundreds of millions of doses of coronaviru­s vaccines to the American people. But they still don’t know the specifics of what plans, if any, Trump’s team has already put in place.

“There’s a whole lot of things that we just don’t have available to us,” Biden said.

The revelation­s amount to the starkest assessment yet of the cost to the American public of Trump’s stubborn refusal to concede his defeat in the just-finished election.

Wary of giving any sign that he recognizes Biden won, Trump ordered his administra­tion not to cooperate with the incoming Biden team in any way.

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