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 frightening nationwide surge in COVID-19.
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.
Republican lawmakers have mostly backed Trump's dead-end fight in lockstep. But some GOP leaders have called for Biden to receive security briefings as previous presidents-elect got.
