How Biden will make war on the coronavirus
Biden's first decisions against the coronavirus and the anti-pandemic team decided by the new American president
While President Joe Biden spent his first full day in office with executive action aimed at containing the coronavirus, his administration has been busy solving a key unanswered question: How much vaccine is actually available? – writes Politico.
Conflicting supply totals have plagued federal and state health officials, complicating the new administration's pandemic response plan and casting new doubts on how long Biden will take to bring the virus under control.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, only half of the nearly 38 million Covid-19 vaccines distributed by the federal government have been administered so far. This indicates that there is an excess of unused doses across the country.
But states warn that vaccines are running out, with little perception of when more will arrive.
Federal officials are trying to figure out where reality lies – an urgent effort that goes against Biden's promise to administer 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office.
Biden made the end of the pandemic the centerpiece of his first presidency, vowing an all-out federal effort to reverse the trend of the crisis in the coming months.
But even as he signed a flurry of directives laying the groundwork for this response, White House officials tried to break down expectations – blaming the Trump administration for leaving a situation they insisted was far worse than expected, despite months of meetings. transition and planning.
"What we are inheriting from the Trump administration is far worse than we could have imagined," Biden's Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters Wednesday evening. "We don't have the visibility we hope to have in terms of supplies and assignments."
Biden officials complained during the transition that their efforts to gather intelligence on the coronavirus response have at times been stigmatized by Trump administration policymakers. Biden's aides for weeks have not been able to access Tiberius, the central government database used to track vaccine distributions, according to a transition official. He was also denied access to some permanent government response meetings until days before Biden's oath.
Several state officials on Thursday pointed to supply shortages as the main obstacle to their distribution efforts, adding that directives from both the outgoing and incoming administrations that states should expand their eligibility guidelines have finished. to exhaust the reserves.
"What you see now is that the supply is very limited," said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Coalition, which represents metropolitan health departments. "Suggesting that everyone over 65 get a vaccine in the hope that it will push the offer is not feasible."
Health officials also ran into data problems that hindered states' ability to update the government on daily vaccine supplies.
These issues could take weeks to resolve, state and federal officials said, and represent the kind of complex effort that could quickly bog down the Biden administration's response.
On Thursday, Biden launched a 200-page nationwide strategy to curb the coronavirus, part of an effort to show a clear break with the Trump administration, which shirked responsibility for vaccine distribution and created a patchwork system across the country. country.
The president signed 10 executive orders ranging from invoking the Defense Production Act to accelerate the production of vaccine supplies to directing the Department of Education to give schools guidance on safe reopening.
Health experts applauded the quick steps and detailed plan, but also acknowledged that there will be delays in getting everything in motion. Even if the plans have been underway for months, it will be difficult to get them executed quickly by large government agencies, especially without permanent leadership.
A key part of the president's plan to increase vaccinations is federally supported distribution sites, with the goal of creating 100 sites by the end of February. But state officials have warned that if supply does not increase, the plan would only further disrupt efforts already underway to keep pace with rising demand.
The federal government further alarmed some state officials on Thursday when the Centers for Disease Control indicated it would start counting Pfizer's vaccine vials as the equivalent of six doses – instead of five, according to an email from the agency. obtained from the Politico.
Those vials require specific syringes to extract all six doses, and that type of syringe is so much in demand that the Biden administration said Thursday it could use the defense manufacturing law to increase its production.
Biden officials are also likely to face tight limits on the nation's total vaccine supply for the next few months. Pfizer and Moderna have pledged 200 million total doses by the end of March – enough to cover Biden's initial commitment, but far from what is needed to achieve herd immunity.
And while Biden expressed his willingness to use ADP to accelerate production on Thursday, the increase in supplies and supplies will have no immediate impact on the response.
"It's not a magic bullet," said a former Trump administration official. "They have to explain what they will do with it."
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-biden-fara-guerra-al-coronavirus/ on Sun, 24 Jan 2021 05:35:41 +0000.