The U.S. is working to get millions of vaccine doses delayed by this week’s severe weather out to states quickly, members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team announced Friday.

What You Need To Know

  • Officials are working to send out millions of vaccine doses delayed by severe weather across the country, asking for help from states and vaccination sites

  • They expect to clear the backlog within a week, starting with a shipment of 1.4 million doses on Friday

  • The delay comes at a critical time for the country's vaccination campaign and amid an increase in the COVID-19 variants

  • Officials have also reminded Americans in recent days about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, which are highly effective in preventing COVID-19 illness

About six million doses were delayed due to weather, and all 50 states have been impacted, officials said. Officials are now working to eliminate the backlog, and they’re asking localities to work overtime to help the country get back on track.

“We're asking states, sites and vaccinators to help us catch up and to get Americans vaccinated,” Andy Slavitt, senior adviser for the COVID-19 Response said in a briefing Friday. “We're asking the vaccine administration sites to extend their hours even further and offer additional appointments.”

Officials said they expect to clear the backlog within a week, starting with a shipment of 1.4 million delayed doses on Friday. Since the COVID-19 vaccines require cold temperatures, they held back the impacted doses until inclement weather subsided.  

The delays are in part due to snow and icy conditions impacting employees who work for the central distributors of the vaccine, including FedEx and UPS, along with road closures and power outages near vaccination sites.

“More than 2,000 vaccine sites are located in areas with power outages, so they're currently unable to receive doses,” Slavitt said.

Tens of thousands of Texans are still without power, and even more are without water, leading the government to issue a boil water advisory for 7 million people — a quarter of the population of the state.

The weather delay comes at a critical time for the country’s vaccination campaign, as the administration seeks to keep up its average pace of 1.7 million shots per day and also work to slow the spread of coronavirus variants.

In a briefing earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, explained why vaccinations are so critical to fight virus mutations.

"You need to get vaccinated when it becomes available as quickly and as expeditiously as possible throughout the country," Fauci said on Feb. 8.

"Viruses cannot mutate if they don't replicate. And if you stop their replication by vaccinating widely and not giving the virus an open playing field ... you will not get mutations."

As of Feb. 19, more than 41 million Americans have received at least the first dose of the vaccine. President Biden has made it his goal to vaccinate 100 million people in his first 100 days, which would be by the end of April.

In recent days, officials have also worked to reduce vaccine hesitancy by reiterating the safety of the shot and its efficacy.

“I want to emphasize that we've implemented the most comprehensive vaccine safety monitoring system program in our history,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday. “The fact is: they are safe, and they will save lives.”

Trials showed that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both about 95 percent efficacious against COVID-19, and they are even more effective at preventing severe illness from the virus. Those results seem to be corroborated by real life numbers in Israel, where the country has vaccinated nearly half of its population.