Biden's prediction of a grim winter appeared aimed at lowering public expectations that the pandemic will be over soon after he takes office on Jan. 20, while also sending a message to Congress that his new administration wants to significantly increase spending to expedite vaccine distribution, expand testing and provide funding to states to help reopen schools.
Germany | Germans enjoyed a largely relaxed summer with many restrictions lifted, the dividend of a rapid response to the initial coronavirus outbreak and a reliance on early and widespread testing that won wide praise. It brought the number of daily COVID-19 cases down from a peak of more than 6,000 in late March to the few hundreds by the warmer months. But as people grew lax in following the rules the numbers began to climb to nearly quadruple the March daily record, and the country now finds itself in a new lockdown as it tries to bring the pandemic back under control. (Image: AP)
The first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant was detected in Colorado on Tuesday, and President-elect Joe Biden said that it could take years for most Americans to be vaccinated for the virus at current distribution rates.
Biden's prediction of a grim winter appeared aimed at lowering public expectations that the pandemic will be over soon after he takes office on Jan. 20, while also sending a message to Congress that his new administration wants to significantly increase spending to expedite vaccine distribution, expand testing and provide funding to states to help reopen schools.
Biden, a Democrat, said some 2 million people have been vaccinated, well short of the 20 million that outgoing Republican President Donald Trump had promised by the end of the year. Biden defeated Trump in a November election.
"As I long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should," the Democrat added. At the current rate, "it's going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people," Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware.
Shortly after his remarks, Colorado's Governor Jared Polis announced on Twitter that his state had discovered a case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 first detected in the United Kingdom.
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