Dr. Anthony Fauci certainly had some difficult times with the Trump administration regarding the rollout of COVID-19 information, and now the nation’s top infectious disease expert offered information that’s not quite in line with President Joe Biden’s team.
Fauci on Tuesday had targeted April as the month in which most Americans could count on receiving coronavirus vaccine shots.
Tuesday night, during a CNN town hall, Biden pushed back Fauci’s timeline significantly.
“By the end of July, we’ll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American,” Biden said.
On Wednesday, the “end of July” prediction was also used by the White House’s COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.
“We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” Zients said during a task force briefing.
Fauci’s comments indicated his personal revision as well. He said last week that April would be “open season” for vaccinations, but on Tuesday, he told CNN that mid-May or even June were becoming more likely.
Fauci said the April prediction was “predicated on J&J, the Johnson product, having considerably more doses than now we know they’re going to have.”
Johnson & Johnson, even if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes its product for emergency use, will have fewer than 10 million vaccine doses available, a federal health official told CNN earlier this month.
“I’m a little disappointed that the number of doses that we’re going to get early on from J&J are relatively small, but as we get further into the spring, there will be more and more.”
The U.S. is continuing to ramp up vaccinations. Last week, the U.S. administered a seven-day average of 1.7 million doses a day, up from fewer than a million doses a day in mid-January. a
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