Vaccine supply biggest obstacle to Biden's vaccination plan, CDC director says

Rochelle Walensky, MD, the new director of the CDC, said Jan. 24 that supply is "probably going to be the most limiting constraint early on" to reaching President Biden's goal of administering 100 million COVID-19 vaccines in his first 100 days, The Washington Post reported. 

"We're really hoping that after that first 100 days, we'll have much more production," Dr. Walensky told Fox News

For the last week, the U.S. has administered an average of more than 1 million vaccine doses per day, according to Bloomberg, suggesting the U.S. is on track to meet President Biden's goal.

Dr. Walensky said the Biden administration is working with manufacturers to address supply issues and hopes production will increase "dramatically" by March, the Post reported.  

"One of the biggest problems right now is, I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you, then I can’t tell it to the governors, and I can’t tell it to the state health officials," Dr. Walensky said.

"If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting — not just this week but next week and the week after  — they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public," she added, according to CNBC.  

Anthony Fauci, MD, the White House's health adviser, said Jan. 24 that keeping the pace of vaccinations around 1 million per day may be difficult as more vaccinations occur in the community outside of controlled settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, the Post reported. 

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