Biden Says Every American Who Wants a Vaccine Will Be Able to Get One by Spring (UPDATE)

On Monday, when asked by a reporter, President Biden said that he thinks every American who wants to get the COVID-19 vaccine can do that by this spring.

January 25, 2021

This is a photo of President Joe Biden. — Image via Getty/The Washington Post
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UPDATED January 26, 5:29 p.m. ET: President Biden announced his administration has ordered 200 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses.

"We expect these additional 200 million dosages to be delivered this summer. Some of it will come as early as summer, but by the mid-summer this vaccine will be there. That increases the total vaccine order by 50 percent," President Biden says.

See original story from 01/25/21 below.

Those waiting, patiently or otherwise, for a timeline on when they can receive a COVID-19 vaccine as members of the general public were given what could probably be classified as an educated guess by the new president on Monday. The current answer, at least according to Joe Biden, is "by spring."

Biden stated as much when asked by a reporter when he believed "roughly" that "anyone who wants" a vaccine would be able to get one.

"I think it'll be this spring," Biden said. "I think we'll be able to do that this spring. But it's going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we've ever tried in this country (...) I feel confident that by summer we're going to be well on our way to heading toward herd immunity."

Video of his comments can be seen below:

In addition to that timeline, Biden also aired a revised ambition to try and administer 1.5 million shots per day. He had previously stated an every-24-hours-goal to administer 1 million doses during his first 100 days in office, but it's been pointed out that that's about what the U.S. was already doing when he took office.

Also note that the amount of people being inoculated would be half the number of whatever amount of shots are administered daily because two shots are necessary for the vaccine to take effect.

“We are optimistic that we will have enough vaccine, and in very short order,” Biden also stated Monday. “As we know, we came in office without knowledge how much vaccine was being held in advance or available. We’ve been around a week or so. We now have that. We’ve gotten commitments from some of the producers that they will, in fact, produce more vaccine in a relatively short period of time and then continue that down the road.”

When posed a similar question regarding vaccine distribution this past November by CNN's Jake Tapper, Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that it would be "about April" when people not deemed "high priority" could get said needles in their arms.

"We’re talking probably by April, the end of April, I would think," Fauci said at the time. After stating that the answered date was an estimate, he added his belief that it would happen "within the first quarter."