US President Joe Biden has announced the purchase of 200 million COVID-19 vaccines to vaccinate all Americans.
During a visit to the National Institutes of Health, the Democrat said the federal government signed the final contracts on Thursday afternoon for 100 million more doses of the Moderna vaccine and 100 million more from Pfizer and BioNTech.
“We’ve now purchased enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate all Americans,” Biden said. “Now we’re working to get those vaccines into the arms of millions of people.”
Additionally, Biden said, Pfizer and Moderna have agreed to expedite the delivery of 100 million doses each by a month moving them up to May instead of June.
“That’s a month faster,” Biden said. “That means lives will be saved.”
“That means we’re now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans.”
The push to increase the supply is part of the “around the clock work” of the new administration and the nation’s leading health care officials, he said.
“In just three weeks we’ve deployed over 1,000 federal staff at vaccination sites around the country,” Biden added.
He also noted that he was misled about the true supply of vaccines obtained by the Trump administration.
“My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job,” Biden said. “We won’t have everything fixed for a while. But we’re going to fix it.”
Biden added: “What I was upset with was not having all the facts that were available to the last outfit. We were under the distinct impression there were significantly more vaccines kavailable to begin to be distributed.”