US President-elect Joe Biden has warned that a delay in transition by the outgoing Trump administration will put behind the COVID-19 vaccination plan by “weeks or months”.
In a virtual roundtable with healthcare workers on COVID-19, Biden alleged that his transition team has not been receiving any cooperation from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has refused to concede the November 3 US election and has filed multiple lawsuits challenging poll results in several States.
“One of the problems that we’re having now is the failure of the administration to recognise – the law says that the General Services Administration has a person who recognises who the winner is and then they have to have access to all the data and information that the government possesses to be prepared,” he said.
It does not require there to be an absolute winner, Biden said, adding that it says the apparent winner. “We have been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know about the depth of the stockpiles. We know there’s not much at all. We get to the point where we have a sense of when these vaccines come out, how they’ll be distributed, who will be first in line, what the plan is,” he said.
“There’s over 300 million Americans and beyond our border that they’re going to have to be taken care of. There’s a whole lot of things that are we just don’t have available to us. So much as made available soon, we’re going to be behind by weeks or months being able to put together the whole initiative relating to the biggest promise we have with two drug companies coming along and finding 95 per cent effectiveness/efficiency in the vaccines, which is enormous promise,” Biden said.
He said it is the only slowdown right now that his transition team is facing. “We put together I think a first-rate team that you would all be proud of and we’re all ready to go and doing an awful lot of work right now,” he noted.
This week, some of the nation’s largest medical groups joined Dr Anthony Fauci, as well as members of the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Advisory Board, in calling for the GSA to stop delaying ascertainment and ensure a seamless transition as COVID-19 infection rates surge across the country. The experts emphasised the need for a smooth transition to bolster the COVID-19 response and prevent further harm to the American people.
