The White House on Monday admitted it has no idea how many doses of COVID-19 vaccine it has, with a 20 million discrepancy between the number of doses the CDC says it has sent out versus how many have been reportedly administered.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday was asked for a ballpark figure on how many doses currently exist in the country.
She responded:
"We've been here for five days to evaluate the supply so that we can release the maximum amount while also ensuring that everyone can get the second dose on the FDA recommended schedule."
"So the confusion around this issue, which we acknowledge, there is some confusion, it speaks to a larger problem, which is what we’re inheriting from the prior administration, which is much worse than we could have imagined."
The Biden transition team complained early on, the Trump administration was not communicating with them on issues, including the coronavirus rollout plan, but the Trump team denied the accusation.
Once the doses were available, the Trump administration sent doses to states and left them in charge of how they were administered. Some states have done better than others at getting those doses into people's arms, partly because each state has slightly different eligibility rules, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported.
President Joe Biden said Monday he believes his plan to administer at least 1 million vaccines a day in his first 100 days is on schedule, and might even reach 1.5 million, but he, too, said the numbers of vaccines were fuzzy.
"Time is of the essence," he said. "We are optimistic that we'll have enough vaccine . . . we came in office without knowledge. We've gotten commitment from some of the producers they'll make more in a relatively short time frame."
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