“When you put … the pedal to the floor, you can make it happen,” Fauci told Chris Cuomo at CNN on Thursday.
At the normal pace of vaccinations, that critical threshold will not be reached until February 2022, but Fauci said ramp officials must and will increase production and distribution by “getting community vaccination centers, getting enough involved, using mobile units to inaccessible places. “
Fauci ‘s assessment offers little hope as forecasts predict that the death toll from the virus is likely to reach the top 500,000 within the next month.
“The only way to solve a problem is to own,” he said. “Everyone is in a mask, everyone is adhering to public health measures, getting the vaccine out as soon as possible, doing everything possible we can to get the doses and put them into people’s arms. “
Seniors spend hours waiting in LA
More than a million views of the coronavirus vaccine were given Thursday – the second time as many doses have been given in a day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And while that has brought the total to more than 17.5 million doses administered, officials say they are not getting the vaccines fast enough to meet demand.
In Georgia, officials are seeing high numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and the 120,000 doses delivered to the state each week are not enough to vaccinate the elderly and other high – risk residents, Gov. Brian Kemp said.
“We will still have a lot more demand than we have supply,” Kemp said.
Restrictions on supply in New York City mean there are not enough doses to vaccinate members of the NYPD and FDNY, the groups told CNN Thursday. There is still plenty for those who already have careers and those who have already received the first dose, the FDNY said.
Lines at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday were largely filled with people over 65 with some waiting five hours for the vaccine, Mayor Eric Garcetti said.
“There may be a wait … so use the restroom beforehand, bring water and snacks, and make sure your gas tank is full or your car will be charged,” he said.
President Joe Biden Selected for General Surgeon Dr. Vivek Murthy said the U.S. needs to do more to speed up vaccinations.
“We can’t take a year to get to the required levels of vaccination that we need in this country,” Murthy told CNN ‘s Wolf Blitzer. “We need to get there faster.”
Most Americans do not know when or where to get vaccinated, including old Americans, who are already eligible for vaccination in several growing states, ” KFF President and Chief Executive Drew Altman said in a press release on Friday. ”
New vaccines may be on the way
Officials hope that new coronavirus vaccines will be approved and help speed up administration.
Currently, the US has agreed vaccines with Pfizer and Moderna.
However, Johnson & Johnson are running “very large” clinical trials and expect to have “enough vaccines for 100 million Americans by the spring,” said board member Dr. Mark McClellan told CNBC on Thursday.
Dr. Fauci said the company’s vaccine is “around the corner” from seeking emergency use approval from the FDA.
“They may be a week or two away from looking at the data, until the FDA assesses whether we are in a position where we could move forward and start thinking about being getting it out to the public, “he said.
The new vaccine will bring benefits, he said. It will come at a glance and there will be no need to live in the cold climate that has made it so difficult to store and transport existing vaccines, Fauci said.
“AstraZeneca isn’t completely there yet, you know there’s one that is being tested in a number of countries but it’s a little late, but it’s not too late,” Fauci said.
Last week, the federal government’s Operation Warp Speep program said it hopes to get the approval by the end of March, chief adviser Moncef Slaoui said.
“We hope that the vaccine will be effective again, as has been shown in the tests carried out in Brazil and the UK,” Slaoui said, “so maybe an agreement somewhere towards the last part of March, with a large number of doses available around that time. “
CNN’s Michael Nedelman, Deidre McPhillips, Maria Cartaya, Lindsay Benson, Lauren Mascarenhas, Alexandra Meeks, Evan Simko-Bednarski, Andrea Diaz, Jacqueline Howard and Nick Neville contributed to this report.