By January 1, White House officials had promised 20 million people in the United States would be vaccinated. Instead just 20% of that number, a little more than 4 million people have been inoculated. On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told NBC:
“No excuses — we’re not where we want to be, but hopefully we’ll pick up some momentum and get back to where we want to be with regard to getting it into people’s arms.”
But Operation Warp Speed’s Dr. Moncef Slaoui was full of excuses when he joined CNN’s Alisyn Camerota today to explain the disappointing pace with the vaccine rollout. At first, Dr. Slaoui denied that anything has gone wrong maintaining that they only said 20 million doses would be available, not that they would be administered. But kudos to Camerota and her team for digging up clips of Trump, Health & Human Services Director Alex Azar, and Slaoui himself declaring in the month of December they expected to immunize 20 million people.
Good question. https://t.co/xdqnTuQfqX
— Alisyn Camerota (@AlisynCamerota) January 4, 2021
Slaoui eventually reluctantly agreed “that there is a lag.”
“I wish we had vaccinated 20 million, obviously. We worked day and night to have these vaccines available and we will continue to work day and night to have them immunized.”
Camerota asked why the government isn’t organizing mass vaccination events, but Sladoui blamed the states for the lag, saying it’s not his job to decide whether stadiums should be used for vaccinations.
Watch the full interview above.