The Trump administration is leaving a “huge mess” in terms of vaccine distribution for President-elect Joe Biden to clean up, the Democrat’s incoming chief of staff said Sunday.
But Ron Klain insisted the new administration has " a plan to fix it.”
He said on CNN’s “State of the Union” there is enough supply and distribution infrastructure to meet Biden’s goal of administering 100 million shot within his first 100 days in office, which begin this Wednesday.
“We think there are things we can do to speed up the delivery of that vaccine and make that vaccine supply go farther,” Klain said.
He noted that Biden on Saturday promised to use the Defense Production Act to compel manufacturers to make a special kind of syringe that gets “six doses of the vaccine out of a vial instead of five.”
The comments came amid widespread criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the vaccine rollout, which began in mid-December.
The White House project dedicated to the vaccine, known as Operation Warp Speed, succeeded in its goal of quickly getting drugs developed.
But distribution has happened more slowly than expected, and local officials around the country were surprised last week to discover the federal government lacked a reserve that could be used for second shots. Vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna require two doses to be maximally effective.
