President Joe Biden announced a new goal of reaching 200 million COVID vaccinations given in the administration's first 100 days in office during his first press conference as president on Thursday.
This new goal comes one week after the Biden administration reached its previous goal of 100 million vaccinations in its first 100 days; it was reached on Biden's 59th day in office.
"I know its ambitious, twice our original goal, but no other country in the world has even come close--not even close--to what we are doing," Biden told White House reporters in his address. "I believe we can do it."
Since January, the United States has rapidly increased the amount of vaccines given on a daily basis, with the nation currently averaging about 2.3 million doses per day. If that vaccination rate is maintained, Biden's goal of 200 million doses administered should be reached in roughly five weeks, which is within the target date of April 30.
Beyond increasing the daily number of inoculations, the Biden administration has challenged states to make all adults eligible to receive a vaccine by May 1. Many states have begun opening their vaccine qualifications to at least adults aged 50 or older, with California being the first to fully open eligibility to all residents aged 16 years or older beginning April 15.
The federal government, under both the previous Trump administration and the current White House, has made multiple vaccine delivery deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure effective vaccines. The U.S. is set to receive 200 million doses of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson
With that amount of vaccines, the United States would have a surplus of about 100 million effective doses if it were to inoculate its entire population of roughly 330 million people. And that's not including the deals the federal government has made with other vaccine manufacturers like AstraZeneca
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) has criticized richer nations' distribution of vaccines while poorer nations continue to wait during a press conference on Monday, calling the inequitable distribution of vaccines not just a "moral outrage," but also "economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
The gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries, and the number of vaccines administered through COVAX is growing every single day, and becoming more grotesque every day," said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, W.H.O. director-general, referring to the global health agency's COVID vaccine solidarity initiative.
"Countries that are now vaccinating younger, healthy people at low risk of disease are doing so at the cost of the lives of health workers, older people and other at-risk groups in other countries," Tedros continued.
Tedros argued that racing to vaccinate total populations will deliver a "false sense of security," since the virus will still be able to circulate, and then mutuate further, which in turn will continue to disrupt global travel and trade and delay global economic recovery.
"The more transmission, the more variants. And the more variants that emerge, the more likely it is that they will evade vaccines," Tedros added.
While the U.S. federal government has stated that it plans to invest in vaccination efforts for low-and middle-income nations--including the W.H.O.'s COVAX program--as it renews global relationships, its first priority is to vaccinate its citizens.
"The President has stated his number one priority is to make sure we prioritize the vaccination in this country," said Andy Slavitt, acting senior advisor for the White House COVID-19 response, during a Wednesday press conference. "We've suffered over 540,000 deaths--more than anywhere else in the world."
Biden "came into office with this seriousness of purpose to make sure that we make this country safe again," Slavitt added.
