President-elect Joe Biden deplored on Tuesday, December 29 the delays in the distribution of anti-Covid vaccines in the United States, stressing that the coming weeks would be
"very difficult"
in terms of health.
“The Trump administration's plan for vaccine distribution is very late,”
said Joe Biden, who will take office on Jan. 20, during an address from his home town of Wilmington, Delaware.
"We have to be honest: the coming weeks and months will be very difficult for our country,"
said Joe Biden.
“Perhaps the most difficult of the whole pandemic”
.
Read also: Covid-19: the United States passes the bar of 18 million cases
Hours earlier, Joe Biden's future vice-president, Kamala Harris, had received the first of two doses of Moderna's vaccine against Covid-19.
“I want to encourage everyone to get vaccinated.
It is relatively painless.
It goes very quickly.
It's safe, ”
she said in front of the cameras after receiving the injection.
Some 2.1 million people have received a first injection of one of two licensed vaccines (Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna), according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This number is far from the stated target of the Trump administration, which had promised 20 million people vaccinated by the end of the year.
"We are below the level at which we would like to be,"
acknowledged the eminent American immunologist Anthony Fauci, who is advising the White House on the health crisis.
He said he hoped that the delay would be made up in January.
One death every 10 minutes
Despite calls from authorities to stay at home, millions of Americans have traveled to celebrate Christmas with their families, just a month after the Thanksgiving rush, which had already caused a peak in contamination.
In Los Angeles, ambulances are already lining up in front of saturated hospitals to unload their patients positive for Covid-19.
In this context, southern California announced Tuesday to extend its confinement.
"The worst could happen in early January,"
warned a health official in the country's most populous state, Mark Ghaly.
From a model student of the health crisis, the Golden State has slipped to the rank of dunce.
Now, a resident of Los Angeles County dies every ten minutes from Covid-19.
Some hospitals had to convert their chapels into treatment rooms due to lack of space.
It took the State eight months to reach the milestone of one million contaminations, and only six weeks to reach two million, marking a dizzying acceleration.
And the worst is undoubtedly to come: in Colorado, the British variant of the coronavirus has already been detected.
