US President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki has been called out over the new president’s pledge to administer ‘100 million vaccines in the first 100 days’.
Questioned about the pledge at the new administration’s first White House press briefing, Psaki said that while Trump’s administration was said to have been delivering half a million jabs per day, Biden’s would administer one million per day.
Bloomberg news criticised Psaki in an article headlined ‘Biden’s 100-Day Vaccine Goal was nearly met before he arrived in office’.
On the day Biden was inaugurated, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, 1.6 million vaccine jabs were administered. The average jabs per day for the week was also over 1 million per day.
Biden was asked, in this context, why he promised only one million jabs per day. A journalist asked: ‘Shouldn’t you set the bar higher? That’s basically where the US is right now.’
Biden replied: ‘When I announced it, you all said “it’s not possible”. Come on, give me a break, man.’
Bloomberg tracker also indicates that 63 million jabs have been administered globally, 21.1 million in the US alone – one third of global delivery in the week power transferred from Trump to Biden.
Some states have been slower than others. In the US, individual states administer jabs once they are delivered by the federal government.
The state which has been slowest to vaccinate is California, which weekend reports said had yet to administer almost 60% of the supply received. In December, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to deliver the vaccine speedily and effectively in his state once it arrived.
Prominent doctors and policy experts argued that California should prioritise giving vaccines to people who are black.
According to a Pew poll, however, only 42% of black adults said they would accept vaccination, the lowest of any group by race.