Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested during a Sunday morning interview that the Trump administration could have been more aggressive in its early negotiations with vaccine manufacturers to avoid the supply shortages that have since emerged as the greatest roadblock in the vaccine rollout.
Fauci, a top infectious diseases official who was involved with both the Trump and Biden administrations’ pandemic response, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that while a shortage of doses was “in some respects” inevitable, the U.S. could have potentially secured more when it had the chance.
“We certainly could’ve, I guess, contracted a little bit more aggressively with the companies to get more doses,” said Fauci, adding: “But right now this is what we have.”
Fauci labeled the lack of supply to match booming demand as the greatest struggle in the rollout to date, describing it as a “limiting factor.”
KEY BACKGROUND
The Trump administration secured a total of 400 million doses from Moderna and Pfizer and BioNtech, with final purchases made in late December 2020. The former president drew strong backlash late last year when The New York Times reported that Trump’s administration had turned down the opportunity to secure additional doses from Pfizer, a report that administration officials have rebuked. The Biden administration is currently negotiating to secure 100 million more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech and 100 million from Moderna. Fauci predicted that inoculations will heavily ramp up over the next few months as more doses from Pfizer and Moderna are slated to arrive in March and April, and, as of last week, Johnson & Johnson filed for emergency authorization of its single-dose Covid-19 vaccine.
BIG NUMBER
30.8 million. That’s how many Americans have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Roughly 9% of the U.S. population and 25% of the prioritized population have received at least one jab, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.
