Biden to increase coronavirus vaccine doses to states from 8.6M to 10M per week

In remarks on Tuesday, President Biden said his administration will increase COVID-19 vaccine doses to states from 8.6 million to 10 million every week. He also said that states and territories will get a three-week forecast of vaccine supply.

Video Transcript

JOE BIDEN: Even before I took office, I announced a vaccination strategy, which centers on federal leadership and execution for our whole country. And that's why I directed my COVID team to go to work immediately on how we could step up the vaccination effort and the vaccinations. I'm pleased to announce the first progress in that work today, on day seven of my presidency.

First, after a review of the current vaccine supply and manufacturing plants, I can announce that we will increase overall weekly vaccination distributions to states, tribes and territories from 8.6 million doses to a minimum of 10 million doses starting next week. That's an increase of 1.4 million doses per week. And you all know, if I may note parenthetically, you all know that vaccines are distributed to states based on population, they're based on population. And so the smaller the state, the less vaccine, the bigger the state, the more they get.

And so this is going to allow millions of more Americans to get vaccinated sooner than previously anticipated. We've got a long way to go though. The second thing, we're increasing the transparency with states, cities and tribes and local partners when it comes to the vaccine supply. This is something we've heard over and over again from both Democrats and Republicans, state and local leaders, that they need a plan in order to what, they need know what they had to plan on. They need to know what the order is going to be.

Jeff had a meeting with the governors on Zoom and others, and I think we're getting this coordinated in a way that there is increased cooperation and confidence. But until now, we've had to guess how much vaccine to expect for the next week, and that's what the governors had to do. How much am I getting next week? This is unacceptable. Lives are at stake here.

From this week forward, God willing, we'll ensure that states, tribes and territories will now always have a reliable three-week forecast on what the supply they're going to get. So they'll know three weeks ahead of time, what's going to be there in the third week. This is going to help make sure governors, mayors and local leaders have greater certainty around supply, so they can carry out their plans to vaccinate as many people as possible.

So we will both increase the supply in the short term by more than 15%, and give our states and local partners more certainty about when the deliveries will arrive. These two steps are going to help increase our prospects of hitting or exceeding, God willing, the ambitious goal of 100 million shots in 100 days.