Biden Administration Secures 200 Million more Covid-19 Vaccine Doses

By Staff, Agencies

US President Joe Biden announced his administration secured 200 million more doses of coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, raising the likelihood he will stand by his promise of inoculating some 300 million Americans by summer.

The announcement came after he toured the National Institutes of Health near Washington, DC, and as the US enters a new phase in providing shots at drugstores and supermarket pharmacies. These will be available as early as Friday.

The deal, which secures “100 million more Moderna and 100 million more Pfizer vaccines," will provide “enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July," Biden said.

“We remain in the teeth of this pandemic,” he said, noting that January was the deadliest month of the pandemic.

Biden further lamented: “We lost over 100,000 of our fellow citizens.”

While the order will arrive by mid-July, a million doses of previously procured vaccines are set to arrive at some 6,500 locations throughout the country.

Biden also noted that the Trump administration misled him on the number of vaccine doses acquired by the former president, who is currently impeached for incitement to insurrection.

"My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job," Biden said, referring to former President Donald Trump. "We won't have everything fixed for a while. But we're going to fix it."

Biden has stated that dealing with the pandemic is his administration’s top priority, as more than 470,000 people have died in the US from the virus.