President-Elect Biden Criticizes His COVID Team Over Vaccination Speed
President-elect Joe Biden has grown frustrated with the team in charge of plotting his coronavirus response, amid rising concerns that his administration will fall short of its promise of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Biden has expressed criticism on multiple occasions to groups of transition officials — including one confrontation where Biden conveyed to Covid coordinator Jeff Zients and his deputy, Natalie Quillian, that their team was underperforming.
The tensions have surfaced as Biden’s advisers plan a dramatic scale-up of vaccinations starting Jan. 20, when the incoming team inherits a troubled Trump administration vaccine rollout that has fallen well short of its initial targets.
In interviews, multiple senior transition officials defended Zients and stressed the enormity of the challenge, noting that the Trump administration has refused to share key information for weeks.
