Biden’s vaccine victories build on Trump team’s work

“Biden can take credit for finishing the deal, that’s for sure,” said Paul Mango, a former Health and Human Services deputy chief of staff and one of those Trump officials. “But it wasn’t an original idea he had.”

Pharmaceutical executives credited Biden’s team for critical work to forge the alliance but acknowledged the deliberations began during the Trump administration.

“When the Biden administration came in, they took a new look at this,” Merck CEO Ken Frazier said. “It’s not a black-or-white situation. We were inclined to do something. They made it more possible for it to happen in a timely way.”

Since taking office 50 days ago, Biden has overseen significant strides in the nation’s quest to curtail the pandemic. Vaccinations have more than doubled to 2.2 million per day; coronavirus cases have plunged more than 70 percent from their mid-January peak; and the White House has repeatedly touted new deals to secure hundreds of millions of doses in additional vaccine supply.

But after turning last year’s race for the White House into a referendum on the nation’s coronavirus response, Biden officials are building on some Trump-era ideas, while confronting challenges that also dogged Trump officials, including how to roll out a new vaccine and reopen schools. Like their predecessors, they have made abrupt changes to vaccine prioritization, recently elevating teachers in a directive that sowed confusion in some states.

These dynamics cast the early rollout in a new light. They undercut the notion that Biden started from scratch on efforts to distribute and administer vaccines, which has been central to his administration’s messaging, and show instead that he has accelerated efforts by scientists and pharmaceutical companies, as well as by career health and military officials, some of whom are still laboring inside his government.

“For me, the first big test was going to be how well they did with the J & J distribution, which was totally their thing and not left over from the prior administration,” said Walid Gellad, a pharmaceutical expert at the University of Pittsburgh, referring to the single-shot doses that were first authorized under the Biden administration last month.

Of the 3.9 million Johnson & Johnson doses that began shipping out at the beginning of last week, about 630,000 had been administered as of Thursday, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Biden administration officials say there is a data lag, just as their predecessors insisted in December.

“So far it seems there is room for improvement,” Gellad said.

Biden is set to address the nation Thursday evening, stressing the toll of the pandemic and sketching out how it could recede in the coming months, while also touting his administration’s efforts and unveiling new initiatives. The president’s speech will reflect an ongoing balancing act: Biden officials have spent weeks downplaying the vaccination drive they inherited, only to offer more measured comments in the hours leading up to his address.

“We’re grateful for the work that came before us and are doing the best we can to continue it and accelerate it,” Andy Slavitt, a senior White House adviser, said Thursday morning on Fox News.

Biden officials have repeatedly said the Trump administration left them “no plan” to carry out vaccinations and failed to secure sufficient supply, claims faulted by fact-checkers. The new president pledged to deliver 100 million doses in his first 100 days — a promise he’s likely to achieve in fewer than 60 days, renewing criticism from January that the goal, while politically expedient because it was in quick reach, was mismatched with the scale of the nation’s public health crisis.

Moncef Slaoui — a registered Democrat and pharmaceutical industry veteran who helped lead Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative to speed vaccine development — expressed bewilderment about the blame directed by Biden and his top advisers at the early immunization effort, which equipped the United States with multiple vaccines as well as contracts allowing the government to snap up more supply than any other country.

“Honestly I find that unwarranted, unwise and un-understandable,” said Slaoui, who resigned at the Biden administration’s request. “I’m amazed that people felt the need to belittle the work that was done.”

Trump, who had little involvement in the vaccine accelerator managed by his administration, gave voice to these criticisms on Wednesday, saying in a…