New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said he has doubts about the Trump administration's COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan and with the announcement from Pfizer about their promising vaccine, he wants to work with other state governors to fix or halt the vaccine's distribution.
Cuomo told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos the announcement from Pfizer is good in that we may now finally have a vaccine, but bad because "the Trump Administration is rolling out the vaccination plan and I believe it’s flawed. I believe it learns nothing from the past. They’re basically going to have the private providers do it and that’s going to leave out all sorts of communities that were left out the first time when COVID ravaged them."
"So what needs to be done that the Trump administration won’t do that President-Elect Biden could do?" Stephanopoulos asked.
"When you deny a problem the way Trump did, you can never solve it and that’s true in life. The Trump administration denied COVID. So they were never ready for it. There was no mobilization of the government. And they’re still doing the same thing. They’re going to take this vaccine and they’re going to go through the private mechanism. Through hospitals, through drug market chains, et cetera. That’s going to be slow and that’s going to bypass the communities that we call health care deserts," Cuomo asserted.
"I’m sure the Biden administration is going to address that. I think his first step saying let’s focus on the science, let’s depoliticize testing data, listen to the scientists is the exact opposite of Trump but you have two months and we can’t let this vaccination plan go forward the way that Trump and his administration is designing it because Biden can’t undo it two months later. We’ll be in the midst of it and I’m going — I’ve been talking to governors across the nation about that. How can we shape the Trump administration vaccine plan to fix it or stop it before it does damage," he added.
Cuomo has been heavily criticized for how he has handled the COVID-19 outbreaks in his state, particularly with his health order in March that forced COVID-19 positive patients back into nursing homes, despite it being known elderly patients are most at risk of death from the virus.