Covid 19 coronavirus: Joe Biden criticizes the launch of the vaccine

President-elect Joe Biden has criticized the Trump administration for the pace of distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and predicted that “things will get worse before they get better” when it comes to the pandemic.

“We have to be honest: the next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, very tough for our nation. Perhaps the hardest during this entire pandemic,” Biden said during remarks in Wilmington, Delaware.

His comments come as the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 336,000 Americans, and experts warn that travel and vacation gatherings could precipitate another spike in virus cases.

The United States has also reported its first case of the mutant strain that sent parts of the UK into a “level 4” lockdown earlier this month. The new strain is said to be 70% more transmissible.

Biden encouraged Americans to “harden our spines” for the challenges ahead and predicted that “things are going to get worse before they get better.”

He also lashed out at the Trump administration for its vaccination efforts, warning that the project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, is moving at a slower pace than necessary.

“As I feared and warned for a long time, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he said.

Earlier this month, Trump administration officials said they planned to distribute 20 million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year. But according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, just over 11.4 million doses have been distributed and only 2.1 million people have received their first dose.

At the current rate, Biden said, “It’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”

President Donald Trump deflected criticism from Biden, saying that vaccine distribution was the responsibility of individual states.

Biden, who will take office Jan. 20, said he has led his team to put together a “much more aggressive effort, with more federal involvement and leadership, to get things back on track.”

The president-elect said that “he will move heaven and earth so that we go in the right direction.”

He set a goal of administering 100 million injections of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office, but said that to achieve this, the rate of vaccines would have to increase five to six times to one million injections per day.

However, even at that rate, Biden acknowledged that “it will still take months to vaccinate most Americans.”

Biden acknowledged that one of his challenges will be public skepticism about the safety of a vaccine, and he has already been working to alleviate public concerns, firstly receiving his first dose of the vaccine on live television last week.

“Turning this around will take time,” Biden warned.

“We may not see improvements until well into March as it will take time for our Covid response plan to produce visible progress.”