Biden’s first 10 days: missing vaccines, lowered hopes and Trump’s ghost

Although the new US president’s team arrived at the White House with a 200-page coronavirus response plan, it has instead met a mushrooming crisis

Among the issues the Biden administration must resolve is finding out what happened to 20 million vaccine doses that went missing

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US President Joe Biden arrives at the White House on Friday. Biden’s team is still trying to locate upwards of 20 million Covid-19 vaccine doses that were sent to states. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:50pm, 30 Jan 2021Updated: 8:57pm, 30 Jan 2021

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Tyler Pager, Adam Cancryn and Joanne Kenen on politico.com on January 30, 2021.

Joe Biden promised he’d bring in a competent, tested team to run the coronavirus pandemic response, set ambitious vaccination targets and impose strict public health guidelines.

His team arrived at the White House with a 200-page response plan ready to roll out. But instead, they have spent much of the last week trying to wrap their hands around the mushrooming crisis – a process officials acknowledge has been humbling, and triggered a concerted effort to temper expectations about how quickly they might get the nation back to normal.

After a week on the job, Biden’s team is still trying to locate upwards of 20 million vaccine doses that have been sent to states – a mystery that has hampered plans to speed up the national vaccination effort. They‘re searching for new ways to boost production of a vaccine stockpile that they’ve discovered is mostly empty. And they’re nervously eyeing a series of new Covid-19 strains that threaten to derail the response.

US President Joe Biden visits a coronavirus vaccination site during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday. Photo: Reuters

“It’s the Mike Tyson quote: ‘Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,’” said one person with knowledge of the vaccine effort who was not authorised to discuss the work. “They are planning. They are competent. It’s just the weight of everything when you sit down in that chair. It’s heavy.”

Biden officials leading the coronavirus response launched a series of regular briefings this week to keep the public informed on the state of the pandemic and government efforts to contain it and rush vaccines out to as many Americans as possible.