President Joe Biden’s efforts to counter the COVID-19 pandemic in his first 100 days in office were boosted by the ramp-up in the vaccination campaign, but they were also marred by missteps and miscommunications from public health officials.
Biden entered office intending to administer 100 million shots within his first 100 days. He ended up meeting that target by his 58th day. While administration officials called it an ambitious goal at the time, public health experts considered it too modest because the United States was already on track to meet it under former President Donald Trump. Biden then increased his goal to 200 million shots in 100 days, which the administration met with a week to spare.
Indeed, Republicans have said that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, the multibillion-dollar COVID-19 vaccine and treatment development initiative, was integral to the Biden administration’s success in rolling out the shots.
Biden also pledged to restore public trust in federal health experts following Trump’s moves during the pandemic to undercut their authority by resisting mask guidance in public and downplaying the risk of gathering in large crowds for his rallies. Biden has so far received high marks for his handling of the pandemic, with approval from roughly 67% of the public, according to Gallup. In comparison, Trump’s COVID-19 response approval rates fell throughout the pandemic, from about 50% in April down to 36% in late August.
FULLY VACCINATED PEOPLE DON’T NEED TO WEAR MASKS INDOORS, CDC SAYS
Still, administration officials have been criticized for relaying safety guidelines deemed overly restrictive. Republicans have railed against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Director Rochelle Walensky and her conservative guidance for fully vaccinated people that, until Thursday, still advised caution, such as wearing masks indoors when visiting nonvaccinated people. CDC messaging has run counter to Walensky’s remarks several times, forcing the agency to walk back some of the director’s statements. For instance, Walensky said in late March that the CDC data “suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
Just a few days later, a CDC spokesperson reversed course, telling the New York Times that “it’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence.”
In late April, Walensky said that the agency “recommends that pregnant people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.” But CDC officials walked back that statement, telling CBS News that pregnant people “should consider risk of exposure to COVID-19, the increased risk of severe infection while pregnant, the known benefits of vaccination, and the limited but growing evidence about the safety of COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy.”
Walensky went on the defensive last week after the CDC issued new guidelines for summer camps that recommended all campers and staff wear masks whenever possible despite evidence that the risk of transmission outdoors is low.
She has also been slammed by Republicans for bowing to pressure from the American Teachers Federation, the second-largest union for educators in the U.S., to issue conservative school reopening guidelines in February that would allow teachers to work remotely, as well as for schools to be able to close again due to rising cases. Recently revealed emails between the AFT and federal health officials showed that the union influenced the February CDC guidelines, according to the New York Post. Still, Walensky insisted at the time that the guidance was “free from political meddling.” The administration’s guidance for safe school reopenings changed in mid-March to say that students and staff in K-12 schools may now maintain 3 feet of distance from one another as long as mask use is universal.
Walensky also announced in February that reopening schools was not contingent upon vaccinating teachers. Meanwhile, educators in some large school districts such as Chicago were pushing for delayed openings until teachers could get both doses.
FAUCI AND CDC CATCHING HEAT FOR SUMMER CAMP MASK GUIDELINES
Students have started returning to classrooms in person, and the authorization from federal regulators to use the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in youths 12-15 suggests that parents will be more comfortable sending their children to schools in person full time rather than only a few days a week. Pfizer also announced last week that it expects to file an Emergency Use Authorization application for its vaccine to be used in children between the ages of 2 and 11 in September.
Daily vaccinations have climbed consistently through much of the year so far, but declining rates since last month suggest that public confidence in vaccines took a hit after the administration recommended on April 13 that healthcare providers hold off on administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to reports of rare but severe blood clots.
When the CDC’s vaccine panel decided that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks, the 10-day pause was lifted on April 23. When the pause was recommended by federal regulators on April 13, average daily vaccinations had exceeded 3.3 million shots. By April 23, the daily average had fallen to about 2.9 million shots.
The FDA granted an EUA for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in February. The single-shot vaccine was hailed as a saving grace for rural and remote communities, where health departments couldn’t accommodate the other two vaccines because they required highly specialized storage and transport equipment.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT BIDEN’S PROPOSED COVID-19 VACCINE PATENT WAIVERS
Demand for the shots appears to be falling in the U.S. now that 58% of the adult population has received at least one dose. Meanwhile, strained vaccine supplies elsewhere have exacerbated COVID-19 outbreaks. To boost vaccine production abroad, Biden announced last week that he would support a waiver for intellectual property protections for vaccines to give other countries the legal authority to produce generic versions of the shots.
The pharmaceutical industry attacked the administration’s decision on May 5 to support the global waiver, arguing that temporarily lifting IP protections would reveal proprietary information, harm the country’s standing as a global leader in scientific innovation, and shrink the already-strained supply chain that is crucial to manufacturing the vaccines.
“There are more practical ways that would actually lead to people getting shots in the arm, and that’s really by supporting manufacturing capacity and supply constraints,” Brent Saunders, the chairman of Vesper Health, said. “The actual impediment to boosting vaccine supply is the strained supply chain necessary to get raw materials to countries that need them.”
