US Army four-star general Gustave Perna accepted personal responsibility for the failure of his command to deliver all available coronavirus vaccine in the week after the doses became available, NBC News reports.
“I failed. I’m adjusting. I am fixing and we will move forward from there,” Perna told reporters in a telephone briefing. “I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication. I know that’s not done much these days. But I am responsible. … This is a Herculean effort and we are not perfect.”
Government efforts have come under scrutiny in recent days as it became public that millions of doses of the Pfizer vaccine, approved by the FDA last week, were in warehouses as they awaited delivery orders.
Numerous states have announced that they were not going to receive doses they were scheduled to get. This has caused supply chain and scheduling concerns given that the vaccine needs two doses to be fully effective.
“I am the one who approved forecast sheets. I’m the one who approved allocations,” Perna said. “There is no problem with the process. There is no problem with the Pfizer vaccine. There is no problem with the Moderna vaccine.”
Perna stated that 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been delivered so far, and another 20 million will be delivered by the first week in January.