Governor Cuomo, Chair Of NGA, Responds To Biden Administration's Decision To Provide States With More Vaccine & Better Communicate Future Allotments

 

Follows Request from Governors to Federal Government to Increase Supply and Give States More Advance Notice About Future Vaccine Allotments Rather than Week to Week

Governor Cuomo: "The allocation will go up 16 percent but even more importantly, Nicolle, we can count on that allocation for the next three weeks. We've been going week to week and you really can't plan and schedule when you don't know what you're going to get next week. ... I can now turn around and tell my distributors, you're going to get 16 percent more for the next three weeks, so that's good news."

Cuomo: "I say amen, and the American people should say amen. You have the short-term issue which is the confusion created when the Trump Administration made so many people eligible but had no vaccines. That, we're going to work through. The President saying a 16 percent increase and states can count on that for three weeks, that gives us certainty ... That's competent government, professional government, the federal government doing what it should do."

Cuomo: "It is going to take six months to do this. That's competence and it's honesty and it's what the President said he was going to bring and let it now recalibrate the public expectation and slow down all this confusion and anxiety that we feel among the American people."

 Governor Cuomo: It's true. It's not enough. So yes and no. The governors just had a call organized with the National Governors Association with Jeff Zients, who is Counselor to the President and he heads the COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Walensky from the CDC, General Perna, and it is very good news from our point of view, from the governors' point of view. The allocation will go up 16 percent but even more importantly, Nicolle, we can count on that allocation for the next three weeks. We've been going week to week and you really can't plan and schedule when you don't know what you're going to get next week. You can't do it in any orderly way, so knowing what number we're going to get for the next three weeks is very important because it will bring efficiency to the program that we haven't been able to implement. I can now turn around and tell my distributors, you're going to get 16 percent more for the next three weeks, so that's good news. Is 16 percent going to make the difference for those states that can administer the vaccines at a higher rate? No. At this rate we're talking about months and months obviously. And I think it's important to remember, you used the expression federal production, the federal government is not producing this drug. It's Pfizer, it's modern, hopefully Johnson & Johnson gets approved, but they don't have the factory under federal control and that's the problem. They have inherited, I believe, a flawed production schedule that they're now going to have to work with.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on MSNBC's Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace, responding to the Biden Administration's decision to provide states with more vaccine and better communicate future allotments.