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‘Stunned’ by ‘level of incompetence’ in US vaccine rollout: Public health expert
US President Donald Trump has been trying to deflect the blame on the states for failing to achieve the vaccination target.
Renowned public health expert Dr Ashish K Jha on Wednesday expressed frustration over the slower-than-promised speed of vaccinations in the United States. The US government has rolled out two Covid-19 vaccines, one developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and the other by Moderna, after approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over two million people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) so far, almost one-tenth of the 20 million vaccinations promised by federal officials by year-end. Dr Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said that the federal government made no real effort to get the vaccination infrastructure and the states are now scrambling to figure it out.
“They got the vaccines, but the infrastructure to get people vaccinated, they just decided that was not their responsibility,” Dr Jha told CNN. “It strikes me as a level of incompetence I have to say I am stunned by,” he added.
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Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has been trying to deflect the blame on the states for failing to achieve the vaccination target. Taking to Twitter, Trump said that the federal government has distributed Covid-19 vaccines to the states and it’s up to them to administer those vaccines.
“The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!” he tweeted.
Later, Dr Jha said that the US president’s tweet “perfectly captures” the pandemic strategy of the federal government. He recounted the earlier instances of administration blaming the states for the speed of Covid-19 testing and the Personal protective equipment (PPE) availability issues.
“They did they with testing, PPE, and now vaccines...Their theory of the case? Pandemic response has gone poorly because we have 50 failed governors...This is why we need change,” the public health expert tweeted.
