By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News -
The Biden administration does not know the location of some 20 million coronavirus vaccines, reported the New York Post on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) recently stated that it distributed 50 million vaccine doses to different states, but just 31.1 million of them had been administered to citizens.
Nearly 20 million doses are unaccounted for, and the CDC has stated that it’s the states’ responsibility to track them down.
According to the Post, President Joe Biden’s team believes that about two million doses are “missing” due to delays in reporting between the state and federal government, and have likely already been used.
Tracking the vaccines is especially critical due to their fragility. The mRNA vaccines must be kept at ultra-low temperatures of around negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit; otherwise, they lose efficacy.
After repeatedly slamming former President Donald Trump’s management of the pandemic, Biden’s team admitted that the job of distributing the vaccines was more challenging than they’d anticipated.
“It’s the Mike Tyson quote: ‘Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,’” a White House staffer told Politico.
“They are planning. They are competent. It’s just the weight of everything when you sit down in that chair. It’s heavy.”
A staffer from Biden’s transition team suggested that the responsibility for the disorganization lay with the outgoing Trump administration.
“Nobody had a complete picture,” Julie Morita, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board, told Politico.
“The plans that were being made were being made with the assumption that more information would be available and be revealed once they got into the White House.”
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was unable to tell a reporter how many COVID-19 vaccinations the U.S. has in reserve.
After the reporter pressed Psaki to give a “ballpark estimate” on the number of doses, Psaki dodged the question and shifted blame to the Trump administration.
“The confusion around this issue, which we acknowledge there is some confusion, speaks to a larger problem, which is what we’re inheriting from the prior administration, which is much worse than we could have imagined,” she said.
