Trump says vaccine drive in some US states 'very slow', hails Federal govt's distribution

The United States President Donald Trump on Saturday accused "some states" in the country of carrying out COVID-19 vaccination process "very slowly" despite large-scale distribution by his government. Trump took to his official Twitter handle on January 2 to slam the states, which according to him are inoculating recipients very slowly, while he patted his government for "successful" large-scale distribution of vaccines. This comes after the Trump administration faced criticism for not reaching its goal of vaccinating at least 20 million people before the end of 2020. 

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According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American citizens received just over 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines before the end of 2020. Meanwhile, 12 million doses have been distributed by the federal government across the country since it first received the initial shipments from Pfizer and Moderna earlier last month. 

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COVID vaccination in the US

The United States rolled out a nationwide vaccination programme on December 14 after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorisation to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The US FDA approved Moderna's mRNA-based vaccine on December 18 and from December 19 onwards clinics across the country started inoculating the two-dose treatment. The United States has prioritised health care professionals and other frontline essential workers in the First Phase of the vaccination campaign. 

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US President-elect Joe Biden has said that he is willing to invoke the Defence Production Act to ramp up the vaccination drive in the country and to ensure that 100 million Americans are vaccinated by May this year. Donald Trump had also invoked the same law earlier last year to ensure high production of personal protective equipment for health care professionals, who still suffered from the shortage of PPE kits at the peak of the pandemic. The US remains the worst affected country with over 20 million cases and nearly 3.5 lakh deaths. 

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