Biden Covid advisor challenges Cuomo’s letter to purchase vaccine immediately

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Biden Covid advisor challenges Cuomo’s letter to purchase vaccine immediately

President-elect Joe Biden's Covid Advisory Board member Dr. Celine Gounder slammed the Trump administration's piecemeal Covid response as some stat


President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid Advisory Board member Dr. Celine Gounder slammed the Trump administration’s piecemeal Covid response as some states throughout the U.S. scramble to get the vaccine doses they want. 

“I believe we have already had an excessive amount of of a patchwork response throughout the states,” Gounder mentioned in a Monday night interview on “The Information with Shepard Smith.”

In a Friday coronavirus briefing, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mentioned the federal authorities is sending his state 50,000 fewer doses of the vaccine than the week earlier than. The state was getting fewer doses because the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention expanded vaccine eligibility to anybody over the age of 65 on Jan. 12.

On Monday, Cuomo despatched a letter to Pfizer asking if the state of New York may purchase vaccines immediately from the corporate. Final week, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made an analogous request to Well being and Human Providers Secretary Alex Azar.

Gounder instructed host Shepard Smith that this method may trigger extra issues than it solves. 

“I believe Governor Cuomo, himself, had mentioned again within the spring that the scenario round ventilators was primarily ‘one huge Ebay’ with the entire states bidding in opposition to each other for ventilators, and I believe this type of an method to vaccine allocation goes to end result, frankly, in the identical type of scenario that he, himself, was criticizing final spring,” Gounder mentioned. 

Information from the CDC exhibits that the U.S. is averaging about 900,000 vaccinations per day. Throughout an interview with Fox Information, Azar cited the CDC quantity and criticized the Biden administration’s aim of “100 million photographs in arms within the first 100 days.”

“We could have distributed 250 million doses of vaccine by the top of April,” mentioned Azar. “In the event that they’ve solely achieved 100 million vaccinations by then, it is going to be a tragic squandering of the chance that we’ve got handed them.”

Gounder, an epidemiologist at NYU, certified Azar’s assertion, noting that distribution didn’t imply precise injections of the vaccine. 

“We have seen, although, that one, distribution may be very totally different from getting photographs in arms, that that final mile of supply is admittedly the toughest half right here,” defined Gounder. “Secondly, we’ve got but to substantiate that these variety of doses, that 250 million quantity that he is quoting there, is admittedly going to pan out.”

Cuomo in a separate letter to Azar blasted him for “complicated” the general public about vaccine stockpiles. Azar admitted on Friday that no stockpile presently exists.

Biden advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm warned that the worst of the Covid pandemic is but to come back, and the info backs up his grim prediction. The U.S. is quickly approaching 400,000 deaths within the pandemic, in response to Johns Hopkins College knowledge. That is equal to roughly one in 822 People. For 19 consecutive days, there have been a minimum of 23,000 individuals in ICUs because of Covid within the U.S., in response to the Covid Monitoring Challenge. The HHS reported that almost 80% of ICU beds are occupied nationwide. 

Gounder mentioned that the U.S. is in “our fifth peak proper now” and that the following few months will probably be all about “layering protections” so as to keep away from one other. 

“We actually do should double down on issues like masking and social distancing, outside as an alternative of indoors, well-ventilated areas,” Gounder warned. “If we do these issues, then, sure, this can be our final peak but it surely actually relies on every considered one of us doing what should be achieved to get again to regular life.”



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