The US won’t approve the AstraZeneca shot until APRIL, says Operation Warp Speed ​​chief

Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientist has admitted that vaccine rollout in the US “ should be better ” now that the anger is mounting that only about 230,000 Americans are vaccinated a day.

According to updated numbers from the CDC, fewer than 2.6 million people have been vaccinated so far as of Wednesday 9 a.m. ET.

That means that only 461,982 vaccines have been given in the past 48 hours – about 230,000 per day.

“We agreed the number is lower than we hoped,” said Operation Warp Speed ​​co-chief Dr. Moncef Slaoui during a briefing on Wednesday.

“We know it should be better and we are working hard to make it better,” he added of the distribution process.

At least 11.45 million doses have been distributed and the federal government has allocated just under 20 million doses to be distributed by the end of next week.

But that didn’t translate into weapons.

Vaccine rollout in the US lags behind other rich countries. In the 16 days since the US began vaccinating people, 2,589,125 Americans have received their first dose.

That means that an average of about 40 people out of 100,000 in the US are vaccinated daily, compared to 60 per capita in the UK, which approved AstraZeneca’s vaccine developed by Oxford University on Wednesday.

Dr Slaoui said the vaccine – which is more easily distributed because it can be transported and stored at refrigerator temperatures – will likely not be approved until April.

US regulators have been widely criticized – including from President Trump – for dragging their feet over vaccine approvals while thousands of Americans die from COVID-19 every day.

It seems the harsh words did little to scare the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

AstraZeneca expects to have results of its ongoing vaccine research in the US by February, but Operation Warp Speed ​​says it does not expect the shot to be approved for another two months after that.

It remains unclear why. The vaccine was at least 70 percent effective in trials. Data published in The Lancet did not raise major concerns about side effects or safety (despite the fact that the trials were interrupted in September after two participants developed neurological problems, both of which were ultimately unrelated to the shot) /

With the approval of the Oxford / AstraZeneca shot, British officials hope to increase vaccinations to two million a week – almost as many as the US has given in more than two weeks.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine is cheaper and easier to ship than the Pfizer or Moderna injections that are approved in the US for emergency use.

While Pfizer’s shot must be kept at ultra-cold temperatures and Modernas must be shipped and stored frozen, AstraZenecas can be shipped around the world in normal refrigeration, which could be a great boon for faster distribution.

And distribution is painfully slow in the US Delays are literally deadly, with the US hitting a record high of more than 3,700 deaths on Tuesday.

However, having adequate doses, or even getting those doses to states, doesn’t seem to be at the heart of the problem in the US vaccine rollout.

“The problem with the rollout isn’t due to a lack of product – that’s at least a little bit of good news,” Peter Pitts, a former FDA official told DailyMail.com.

The bad news is that the fight against Covid has been a relay race from the start: everyone has to do their part so the rest can do their part, and the baton has been dropped by the runner … . ‘

Scientists managed to develop vaccines in record time, the FDA was able to approve two – though not fast enough, arguably – companies were able to ramp up production of millions of doses of vaccines and ship them across the country.

And now about nine million doses are waiting to be administered.

The latest figures from the CDC show that more than 12.4 million doses have been shipped to the states and territories of the US since Pfizer’s vaccine became the first vaccine to be approved by the FDA on Dec. 11. That includes 959,875 shipped in the last two days.

Notably, the CDC’s public records only document the number of vaccine doses sent – not how many arrived at their destination.

Just over 230,000 shots have been injected in the past two days.

During testing of Tsar Admiral Brett Giroir this week, Americans assured the official number of gun shots is an underestimate, Dr. Slaoui confirmed that the US is nowhere near 20 million people vaccinated.

The problem seems to be somewhere between going out on vaccines and injecting vaccines into people’s arms.

“The frustration is that the logistics of getting people vaccinated is done at the last minute, which is a shame,” Pitts said.

This should come as no surprise to anyone because we always knew that getting the vaccine was not the ultimate victory, the ultimate victory is herd immunity.

This is a state-level proposal [and]… you have 50 different plans, all at different stages of development. No one took the responsibility of working out the plans, and that’s just a shame. ‘

Texas is doing literally nothing to give Texans the vaccine. You tell the elderly