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Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday acknowledged that the US needs to play “catch up” with its rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine — blaming the botched distribution on “glitches.”
“We are not where we want to be. There’s no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate, get some momentum going,” Fauci told correspondent Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”
The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the nation “fell short” of its goal to distribute 20 million vaccines to facilities by the end of December, but has been “catching up with that” in the first few days of January.
“What we need to catch up with now is getting into people’s arms, because there’s now about 4 million. We wanted to get to 20 million,” Fauci said.
He said the headaches so far in distributing the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer have been “understandable.”
Dr. Fauci, speaks as he prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health Getty Images“I think it’s just trying to get a massive vaccine program started and getting off on the right foot. There have been a couple of glitches, that’s understandable” he said.
“I think the important thing is to see what’s happening in the next week to week-and-a-half.”
