Biden: Coronavirus vaccines will be widely available by July

President Biden said on Tuesday that coronavirus vaccines will be widely available to the general public by the end of July.

Video Transcript

ANDERSON COOPER: When is every American who wants it going to be able to get a vaccine?

JOE BIDEN: By the end of July of this year. We have-- we came into office, there was only 50 million doses that are available. We have now, by the end of July, we'll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American.

ANDERSON COOPER: When you say--

When you say by the end of July, do you mean that they will be available, or that people will have been able to actually get them? Because Dr. Fauci--

JOE BIDEN: They'll be available.

ANDERSON COOPER: They'll be available.

JOE BIDEN: Be available. Here, look. What we did, we got into office and found out the supply, there was no backlog. I mean, there was nothing in the refrigerator, figuratively and literally speaking, and there are 10 million doses a day that were available. We've upped that in the first three weeks that we were in office to significantly more than that.

We've moved out, went to the Pfizer and Moderna and said, can you produce more vaccine and more rapidly. And not only agree to go from 200 to 400, then they've agreed to go to 600 million doses? And that's-- and they're, and we got them to move up the time because we used the National Defense Act to be able to help the manufacturing piece of it to get more equipment and so on.

ANDERSON COOPER: So if end of April-- excuse me, end of July, they're available. To actually get them in the arms of people who want them, that will take what? A couple more months?

JOE BIDEN: Well, no. A lot will be being vaccinated in the meantime.

ANDERSON COOPER: OK.

JOE BIDEN: In other words, it's not all of a sudden, 600 million doses are going to appear. And what's going to happen is, it's going to continue to increase as we move along, and we'll have reached 400 million by the end of May, and 600 million by the middle of-- by the end of July.

And the biggest thing, though, as you remember, when you and I-- no, I shouldn't say it that way, as you remember. But when you and I talked last, we talked about it's one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn't have when we came into office, but a vaccinator. How do you get the vaccine into someone's arm? So you need the paraffin, you need the needle, you need the mechanisms to be able to get it in, you have to have people who can inject it in people's arms.

ANDERSON COOPER: That's been one of the problems, is just getting enough people.

JOE BIDEN: Yes. Now we have made significant strides, increasing the number of vaccinators. I issued an executive order allowing former retired docs and nurses to do it. We have over 1,000 military personnel. The CDC has been-- I mean, excuse me, the-- we have gotten the National Guard engaged. So we have significant number of vaccinators, people who'd actually be there. Plus, we've opened up a considerable number of locations where you can get the vaccine.