On Dec. 8, then-President-elect Joe Biden vowed to deliver 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office.
“I’m absolutely convinced that in 100 days, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better,” Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.
But before Biden even took office, the Trump administration had already hit that number.
In one of his first acts in office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders. After one signing ceremony, an Associated Press reporter, Zeke Miller, asked Biden if his target should be set higher than 1 million a day, noting “that’s basically where the U.S. is right now.”
“When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible,” Biden said gruffly, blasting the media. “C’mon, give me a break, man.”
On Monday, Biden bristled again when faced with a question about the 1-million-a-day goal.
“One more on vaccines. Mr. President, one more on vaccines,” Fox News reporter Peter Doocey said as Biden sought to leave at the end of a brief press conference following another executive order signing ceremony.
“Now, wait, wait, wait,” Biden said. “I know he always asks me tough questions, and he always has an edge to them, but I like him anyway. So go ahead and answer — ask the question.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. So you just said that you think within three weeks or so we’ll be at the point where there are a million vaccines per day, but it seems like —” Doocey said before the president cut him off.
“No, I think we’ll get there before that. I said, ‘I hope…’ — I misspoke. I hope we’ll be able to increase as we go on until we get to the million-five a day. That’s my ex- — my hope,” Biden said.
According to CDC data, that’s already close to happening by average, and we’ve even surpassed it in a single day last week: Biden’s Inauguration Day.
“In the last week, an average of 1.25 million doses per day were administered,” Bloomberg notes, citing the CDC data represented in its Covid “Vaccine Tracker.” On Jan. 20, 1.6 million doses were administered, followed by 1.3 million on Jan. 21 and 1.4 million on Jan. 22.
Biden went on to say that he expects everyone who wants a vaccine would be able to get one “this spring,” a question his press secretary dodged earlier in a daily White House briefing.
“I think it will be this spring. I think we’ll be able to do that this spring,” he said. “But it’s going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we’ve ever tried in this country. But I think we can do that.”
Doocey followed up his question with another: “The follow-up to that would be: Now that you’re president and you’re saying, ‘There is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.’ What happened to two months ago when you were talking declaratively about ‘I’m going to shut down the virus’?”
“Well, I’m going to shut down the virus, but not — I never said I’d do it in two months. I said it took a long time to get here; it’s going take a long time to beat it. And so we have millions of people out there who are — who have the virus,” Biden said.