PRESIDENT Joe Biden on Tuesday night vowed coronavirus vaccines for all Americans by July and that most schools would open full-time by May.
Biden made the promises during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that was focused on his Covid-19 response.
Moderator Anderson Cooper first asked Biden when every American who wants to get the coronavirus vaccine will be able to access it.
“By the end of July of this year,” Biden replied.
“By the end of July, we’ll have over 600million doses – enough to vaccinate every single American.”
Biden added that there was a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines under the former administration.
“We came into office, there was only 50 million doses that are available,” the president said.
“I mean there was nothing in the refrigerator figuratively or literally speaking.”
Biden referred to former President Donald Trump as “the former guy” when he was asked to comment on if he was committed to passing a $1.9trillion Covid-19 relief bill.
“Remember you and I talking during the campaign, that you had the former guy saying that well, you know, we just can open things up, that’s all we need to do,” Biden told Cooper.
“We said no, you got to deal with the disease before you deal with getting the economy going.”
During the 75-minute town hall, Biden also said he is confident that most students in kindergarten to eighth grade will be back to attending school five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office.
The president said that reports that his goal was to students to be in school once a week was a communication mistake.
“But what I’m talking about is, I said opening the majority of schools in K through eighth grade, because they’re the easiest to open and the most needed to be opened in terms of the impact on children and families having to stay home,” he said.
Biden said that schools could opt to hold classes into the summer “like it’s a different semester.”
The town hall covered various topics, from Biden’s push to boost the minimum wage to $15 per hour to his view that white supremacists pose the biggest domestic terror threat in the country.
Biden insisted that the US is “not divided.”
”You go out there and take a look and talk to people, you have fringes on both ends,” he said.
“But it’s not nearly as divided as we make it out to be and we have to bring it together.”
He also said that every living past president has called him except for Trump.
