Biden on Trump administration distributing vaccine: ‘There is no detailed plan’

President-elect Joe Biden said Friday that the Trump administration had shared information with his transition team about distributing a vaccine to various states, but Biden said his team had not seen a “detailed plan.”

“There is no detailed plan that we’ve seen, anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm,” Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Delaware.

“It’s going to be very difficult for that to be done and it’s a very expensive proposition,” Biden said. He noted, “There’s a lot more that has to be done.”

Biden stressed the importance of distributing the vaccine in an equitable manner across the country, noting that Black and Hispanic people infected with the virus have died at disproportionately higher rates than White people. He said his team is also looking at getting health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities the vaccine first, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently advised.

Stimulus talks

The President-elect said he was encouraged by the bipartisan efforts in the Senate around a $900 billion relief package, but noted any package passed in the lame duck session in Congress would be insufficient.

“I think they’re on their way to being able to come up with a package that meets the basic immediate needs that we have, but I’ve made it real clear, it’s just a down payment. This is not the end of the deal,” Biden said. CNN has reported the President-elect and his team are gearing up to push for an ambitious new stimulus bill once he takes office on January 20.

Biden did not answer whether he had reached out to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about passing a compromise stimulus bill. “We’ll be in dire trouble if we don’t get cooperation. I believe we will,” Biden said when asked if he had spoken with McConnell.

McConnell’s office declined to comment on whether the two men have indeed talked. Two other senior aides who are in close contact with the majority leader also said they were unaware if McConnell and Biden have spoken.

The President-elect said “it would be better” if the package included $1,200 stimulus checks, adding, “I understand that may be still in play.”

“The whole purpose of this is we’ve got to make sure people aren’t thrown out of their apartments, lose their homes, are able to have unemployment insurance they can continue to feed their families on as we grow back the economy,” Biden said.

The US economy added 245,000 jobs in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That number was 224,000 fewer than economists had expected and a huge slowdown from the 610,000 jobs added in October.

Biden described Friday’s jobs report as “grim” and said, “It shows an economy that’s stalling, and we remain in the midst of one of the worst economic and job crises in modern history.”

“But it doesn’t have to stay that way,” Biden said. He urged Congress to act immediately to provide economic relief to Americans, saying if Congress and President Donald Trump fail to act by the end of December, millions of Americans would lose the unemployment benefits they rely on.

The President warned inaction could lead to “a much broader economic cost due to long-term unemployment and businesses failing.”

“The sooner we pass the funding, the sooner we can turn the corner on Covid-19,” Biden said. He stressed the importance of substantial funding for vaccines and testing, in order to allow for schools and businesses to reopen safely.

Inauguration plans

On his upcoming inauguration, Biden said he would heed the advice of public health experts in order to keep people safe and contain the spread of the virus, which has been spiking across the country. He said Americans should expect to see something closer to what the Democratic National Convention looked like, which was almost entirely virtual.

“It is highly unlikely there’ll be a million people on the (National) Mall going all the way down to the (Lincoln) Memorial,” Biden said. He said he guessed there would not be a “gigantic inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

He said his team is in consultation with House and Senate leadership about their plans, as well as with people who helped put on the Democratic convention.

This story has been updated with additional information from Biden’s speech.