It's no secret that there aren't enough Pfizer vaccine doses for every American who wants one. But there are at least a few million more sitting in a warehouse, waiting for the government to decide where they're headed, Pfizer said.
After receiving emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration last week, Pfizer said Thursday that it has since shipped out the 2.9 million vaccine doses the U.S. government told the company to distribute. But Pfizer "has millions more doses sitting in warehouses awaiting instructions for where to ship" Bloomberg reports. Pfizer also denied it was the cause of shipping delays some states complained about, saying it's the federal government causing the holdup.
The vast majority of Americans have said they'll get the coronavirus vaccine, with many ready to take it as soon as possible. So far, there are only enough doses available to start vaccinating people in nursing homes and frontline health care workers, whom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed to prioritize.
The U.S. bought 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine over the summer. But the Trump administration reportedly turned down Pfizer's offer to sell the U.S. more doses a few months later, meaning Pfizer may not be able to get another shipment to Americans until summer 2021. The U.S. did buy another another 100 million Moderna vaccine doses last week. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Biden has entered the Oval Office — and has immediately started undoing former President Donald Trump's legacy.
After his inauguration Wednesday, Biden made his way into the White House for the first time as president, and found what he called a "very generous letter" Trump had left there for him. And after sitting down at the Resolute Desk, Biden signed a wave of executive orders overturning Trump's policies and installing others the former president would've opposed.
For starters, Biden instituted a mask mandate on all federal property across the U.S. Biden can't force Americans to wear masks everywhere — that's up to governors — but he does have jurisdiction over any federal government-owned property. He also stopped Trump's planned withdrawal from the World Health Organization, which Trump criticized for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and started the process of putting the federal government in charge of vaccine and testing coordination.
The U.S. had also just withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord after Trump moved to step away from it years ago. But Biden's executive order signed Wednesday put the U.S. on track to rejoining it. Another order also temporarily banned oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and halted construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
After four years of Trump's hardline immigration policies, and seemingly in an attempt to counter the Obama administration's immigration legacy, Biden quickly took action on immigration as well. He signed orders reversing Trump's Muslim travel ban and stopping construction of the southern border wall, and plans to bring a massive immigration reform bill to Congress on Wednesday. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Biden's team is reportedly worried the COVID-19 pandemic they're inheriting will be even more difficult to handle than they anticipated, and some advisers say a new, more contagious variant of the virus — as opposed to vaccine distribution logistics — is the main reason why, Bloomberg reports.
Biden has promised to work to curb the virus' spread with a push to inoculate 100 million Americans in 100 days. He plans to encourage widespread mask usage, increase testing, and safely reopen schools. But the fear is that the new variant, which was initially discovered in the United Kingdom, but has made its way to the U.S. and elsewhere, will upend the entire plan and subsequently damage his prospects of achieving other legislative priorities like immigration reform and infrastructure development, Bloomberg notes.
While the mutation is seemingly at the center of the apprehension, Biden's aides also reportedly blame their predecessors for putting them in a bad spot. Some aides, per Bloomberg, privately allege the Trump administration "dragged its heels in showing them details of the federal response and its data." Ultimately, they reportedly opted against making those concerns public because they wanted to avoid publicly criticizing the Trump administration during the transition, potentially motivating them to cut them out of the loop completely.
A former senior Trump official told Bloomberg that description of the situation was just the Biden team's way of lowering expectations, adding that they were given unprecedented access to pandemic-related information. Read more at Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell