President Biden announced his administration will buy an extra 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for delivery this summer as it ramps up deliveries to states amid complaints of shortages and canceled appointments.
The order means the White House hopes to deliver enough doses to vaccinate 300 million people by the fall.
At the same time, Biden said the administration would surge deliveries to states by about 16%.
As he did so, he criticized the Trump administration for leaving the program in far worse shape than expected and warned that things will get worse before they get better, with the death toll likely reaching half a million next month.
“We didn’t get into this mess overnight. It’s going to take months for us to turn things around,” he said in the State Dining Room of the White House.
“But let me be equally clear. We’re going to get through this. We will defeat this pandemic.”
His admission that things will get worse stands in contrast to the optimism of his campaign and rhetoric before taking office.
“I am not going to shut down the economy, period. I am going to shut down the virus,” he said in November after his election victory.
In a sign of the chaos at the heart of the vaccine program, his officials have been unable to say how many doses they have in reserve.
Biden said states often had no idea how many doses they could administer in the week ahead.
“We’ve had to guess how much vaccine to expect for the next week, and that’s what the governor’s had to do,” he added. “This is unacceptable. Lives are at stake.”
The White House said the administration would seek to purchase an additional 100 million doses of vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. A third company, Johnson & Johnson, is expected to seek emergency authorization in the coming weeks for its own vaccine.
