President Biden tours a vaccination center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda last month. [Soure: The Washington Post]
President Joe Biden says his administration has finalized deals for another 200 million doses of the two coronavirus vaccines authorized in the United States.
This means they have secured sufficient shots to cover everyone currently eligible for inoculation by the end of July.
In remarks capping an afternoon tour of the National Institutes of Health, Biden said the federal government had purchased 100 million more doses from Pfizer and German company BioNTech, as well as 100 million more from Moderna, using options built into existing contracts with those companies.
“We need more people to get vaccinated to beat this pandemic. That is why in the first three weeks that I’ve been in the office, we’ve increased the supply of weekly vaccines shipment to the States by almost 30%. That means millions more Americans will get vaccinated in February than the previous administrations on track to do.”
The announcement was the centrepiece of an emotional address from Biden, who made a point of speaking through his mask as he called it a “patriotic responsibility” to wear one.
