Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, clarified that the Biden administration's plan to administer 100 million vaccines during the president's first 100 days does not mean that 100 million people will be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
When President Biden announced his plan on Dec. 8, he said that his administration would get "at least 100 million COVID vaccine shots in the arms of people in the United States in the first 100 days" through a combination of increasing funding toward vaccination and expanding the priority vaccination groups to include people older than 65 years of age, essential workers, and those living in remote communities.
In a later interview, Fauci said that "the goal that's been set … is to have 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days — primary and boost," calling it an "entirely achievable goal."
"There was a little bit of a misunderstanding," Fauci told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. "What we are talking about is 100 million shots in individuals. So shots, in other words, when you get down to, say, a certain part of 100 days, at the end of that, you will have some people who have gotten both shots, and some will still be on their first shots. The president is saying 100 million shots in the arms of people within 100 days."
"Reportedly, the transition team projections are that that's more like 67 million people by April, by the end of 100 days," CBS's Margaret Brennan said. "Is that an accurate number?"
"Right. Yeah, that is — well, I haven’t done the math myself, but it sounds like the accurate number," Fauci said. "You have people who will have gotten two doses, and some who are still on their first dose. You add them all up and look at shots, it is 100 million shots in the arms of people within the first hundred days."
iFrame Object
After first receiving criticism that the goal of vaccinating 1 million people every day was too ambitious, critics now say that the Biden administration needs to boost its goal.
"In a week that partly took place during the Trump administration, we've already met Biden's target of 1m vaccine doses/day," FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver tweeted. "We need a higher target."
Tweet
So far, more than 20.5 million of the 41.4 million distributed vaccines have made it into someone's arm, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 17.3 million people have received at least one dose, and about 3 million have received both doses.
Statistics of daily COVID-19 cases indicate that the United States is potentially heading out of the holiday surge, with 172,000 cases reported on Saturday compared to 292,000 on Jan. 8. However, hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag behind surges in cases. The U.S. broke 25 million COVID-19 cases on Sunday — more cases than the next three countries combined, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
