BUFFALO, N.Y. — President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced the United States is now on track to have enough vaccine supply for all adult Americans by the end of May.
That's moving the timeline up two months from the end of July, which had been announced just about three weeks ago.
Biden said this is possible through the Defense Production Act and a partnership between pharmaceutical companies.
"Johnson & Johnson and Merck will work together to expand the production of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine," President Biden said.
He added, "This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II."
"Great news," said Dr. John Sellick, a hospital epidemiologist at Kaleida Health. "Getting that production capacity, especially since this is a vaccine that requires a single dose and does not require the deep freeze, I think this is gonna be a big help."
Dr. Sellick told 2 on Your Side the more people who receive the vaccine the better, especially as we continue to learn of new variants.
"If the virus is not spreading and replicating, it can't mutate, so the sooner we get people vaccinated, the less likely that these variants are going to cause a problem," he explained.
However, Dr. Sellick said even with vaccine supply ramping up we likely won't see an immediate shift back to normalcy.
"We're still going to need a period of time because I don't think we're going to have everybody to the numbers that we really want completely vaccinated by the end of May," he said.
Dr. Sellick believes the process will likely carry on into the summer and lifting further restrictions will still be a gradual progression.
However, he's optimistic with more people getting vaccinated and warmer months ahead we'll continue to see COVID numbers decline.
