Army General Gustave Perna, chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed, apologized to some state governors Saturday, acknowledging a “miscommunication” with states about how many doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine would initially be available.
More than a dozen states were told to expect far fewer doses than they were anticipating.
“At the end of the day, the number of doses available to us to allocate ended up being lower,” Perna said at a press briefing Saturday. “As we gave forecasts to the jurisdictions and governors and states worked their priorities against those forecasts, when we had to decide what was eventually going to be shipped out, I had to lower the allocations to meet the releasable doses that were presented to me.”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer blasted the Trump administration on Friday for its “slow-walking” the distribution, citing either corruption or ineptitude as the reason for delay, when millions of doses sat in waiting in Portage, Michigan.
Whitmer was raw on emotion on the day that Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon’s death due to COVID-19 was announced.