Biden's coronavirus advisers talk vaccine plan in 1st public briefing

President Joe Biden's top COVID-19 advisers held their first public briefing Wednesday on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as Biden has pledged to be more transparent about the administration's response.

The briefing addressed the current COVID-19 situation and vaccine-distribution problems. It was the first formal White House briefing on the pandemic since Nov 19. The administration said it will hold briefings three times a week to explain its efforts to control the pandemic. The next briefing will be on Friday.

"The president strongly believes that the scientists who are leading the effort should communicate directly to the American people," said Biden's COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients, who ran the briefing.

Zients, an entrepreneur and former Obama administration official, repeated that the federal government no longer has a stockpile of vaccines to distribute. He said that the Biden administration was examining additional ways to accelerate vaccine production.

His statement came after Biden announced Tuesday that he plans to speed up the weekly supply of COVID-19 vaccines to states and territories in the coming weeks, and the president said he also plans to deliver enough doses for 300 million Americans by the end of summer.

"Most states are getting better at putting needles in arms," said Zients, who pleaded with Congress to swiftly pass Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

The bill includes $160 billion for a national vaccine program; a $20 billion national program would establish community vaccination centers across the nation and send mobile units to remote communities for vaccine distribution.

Zients said the Department of Health and Human Services would recruit retired doctors and nurses to administer vaccines and ease regulations to allow them to do so in states other than where they were licensed.

He said the federal government still faces a shortage of personal protective gear and other essential supplies unless Congress quickly passes the virus relief bill.

During the briefing, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the CDC's ensemble forecast now projects there will be 479,000 to 514,000 deaths by Feb 20.

Walensky said a new variant of the coronavirus first detected in the UK has now been found in 26 states. Another variant first identified in South Africa hasn't been identified in the US.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president's chief medical adviser, said that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are "well within the cushion of protection" for the variants.

The UK variant has a slight impact on vaccines, but the South Africa variant has shown some resistance to antibodies.

The equitable distribution of medical care and vaccines was also part of the briefing. White people are getting vaccinated at higher rates than black and Latino Americans, according to a CNN analysis released on Tuesday.

"Equity is absolutely a foundational component of our national plan," Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith, the chair of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, said in the briefing.