White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday stood by President Biden’s announcement the day before that the country has secured enough doses of COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate the country’s adult population by the end of May. However, Psaki also shared the administration’s concerns surrounding vaccine hesitancy.
Asked about the White House’s concern that vaccine hesitancy could impede the country from achieving herd immunity sooner, Psaki replied that although the President expects that there will be enough vaccines for all Americans by the end of May, the country will eventually reach a point where there is more supply than demand.
“We will have more vaccines than people who want vaccines,” Psaki said. “That feels hard to believe at this moment in time.”
Psaki stressed that the Biden administration is concerned about vaccine hesitancy in a range of communities across the country, especially in communities of color where there has been a higher level of vaccine hesitancy.
Psaki then pointed to a health equity task force led by Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith of Yale aimed at addressing racial and ethnic disparities in health care access. The White House press secretary said that the federal task force will be responsible for closely examining issues related to vaccine hesitancy, and it plans to reach out to communities that may be skeptical of vaccine safety and efficacy.
Biden’s announcement on Wednesday capped a months-long search for doses to cover the U.S. population that began last year as the vaccines were being developed, but kicked into high gear in December. Then, it emerged that the Trump administration had failed to exercise an option in its contract with Pfizer for millions of additional doses.
That bottleneck in dose supply initially meant that the U.S. may not have had enough vaccine to cover the population until the fall.
But since January, Biden officials have focused on increasing the supply of doses. They signed new contracts with Pfizer and Moderna, which upped those firms’ supply, and invoked national security powers to speed up supply chains for the shots.
But it was on Saturday when the FDA authorized the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for emergency use that put the country over the edge. That ushered in millions more doses, giving the country extra vaccine and allowing it to inoculate more people sooner.
Watch Psaki’s remarks below:
Good luck with that, Joe…
We absolutely must donate or reroute those extra doses to poor countries (with time enough for transport and distribution on their end). Not one single dose should be wasted!
I think fewer people will be hesitant once millions of people have gotten the vaccine without much consequence. I can see not wanting to be first in line but, after 100 million or so have received the vaccine, it will appear a lot less risky to many of those who are currently skeptical. There will always be anti-vaxxers, of course, but I think the rest will probably fall in line by summer.
Well, if there were any question, I’m persuaded now it’s fine. People I trust say it’s been tested, certainly a substantial number of people have taken all these vaccines with no unusual reactions, and the far greater risk is not to take it and run the rapids every day out there. Plus there’s the psychological cost of what’s pretty close to a lost year. I’m eager to get this done.
This is one that just goes on the civic duty list. We don’t know any long-term implications, but we do know the long-term implications of getting covid, including serve lung damage and other effects.
But whatever risks there are in the vaccine are significantly outweighed by the moral obligation to society to stop this thing, and to protect that small part of the population with immunodeficiencies who can’t get it.