Gen. Perna Outlines The “Whole Of America Approach,” “Remarkable Feat” Of Operation Warp Speed

i just would like to take a minute as we close out this year to kind of think about where we've been over the last seven and a half plus months since uh dr slowly and i were notified uh and you know presented at the rose garden in may so what we've done we've developed two safe and effective vaccines now for use authorized for use to the american people we've scaled up manufacturing capacity in some cases building new brick and mortar from the ground up we've issued 18 defense production act ratings which allows us to prioritize materials supplies and equipment essential to the us government contracts it puts them at the front of the line hired and trained new staff and embedded logisticians and supply chain experts in all the manufacturing facilities as we move forward we developed and launched a new data system that connects hundreds of existing systems at the state and local level to allow us to have visibility uh so that we can see ourselves across the entire united states we've executed extensive planning starting with the cdc putting out their playbook in september and then extensive coordinations with the state health officials every day every week and every month since and it continues as we go forward we dedicated regional planning teams that are constantly available 24 hours a day seven days a week at the cdc in support of the state and local governments we provided it specialists to help all the jurisdictions to see themselves so that they understand exactly where everything is at a single point of time they can plan and direct accordingly we developed a program we the cdc really developed a magnificent program to uh in collaboration with cvs and walgreens to go to all of our long-term health care facilities and administer vaccine to really one of the two top priorities the elderly living in these homes over 906 clinics conducted to date as we ramp up to four thousand a week so really remarkable tasks we've inked a partnership with nineteen pharmacy chains to ensure as we go from stage one a to one b that we can expand the capacity of distribution throughout the country which gives everybody greater access to the vaccine in each state as directed by the governor's governors and the state health officials we funded distribution for vaccines alongside of ancillary kits to ensure that those things were there when they were needed and we did this early on so that we had the right distribution mechanisms and the right ancillary kits to be distributed with the vaccine and we provided dry ice to everybody that wants it on the first replenishment for all pfizer vaccines we cut through the red tape right to ensure all the vaccines provided to americans will be free of charge and finally as i started out with we've allocated uh and will be available for final ordering 20 million doses by this thursday distributed more than 14 million doses of vaccine to over 10 800 locations and we have administered over 2 million doses in the last two weeks really a remarkable feat and everybody collectively should be very proud right the federal government industry academia state and local governments it has been a whole of america approach