Discussions on the Sunday morning political talk shows focused on the rollout of the first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The first shipments left a Pfizer facility in Michigan earlier in the day.
Guests also discussed the Electoral College meeting on Monday, and the failed effort by Texas to overturn the presidential election results in four battleground states.
“We plan to have about 40 million doses of the vaccine available to us and distributed in the US by the end of this year,” Moncef Slaoui said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that the U.S. would distribute up to 80 million doses through January.
Dr. Stephen Hahn told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the federal government was “hopefully” planning to begin administration of the vaccine within hours.
“That is a significant problem,” Dr. Stephen Hahn said. “I mean, if you think about how we get out of this pandemic, we have to continue our mitigation efforts right now. That is so important, mask wearing, et cetera. But the way we see light at the end of the tunnel, the way we get through this is to achieve herd immunity. And that means we need to vaccinate a significant number of people in this country, including those who are hesitant.”
“This is a source of great concern for all of us and I would like to plead just to people who are listening to this this morning to really hit the reset button on whatever they think they knew about this vaccine that might cause them to be so skeptical,” said Dr. Francis Collins.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said Sunday that nursing home residents across the U.S. would be receiving the coronavirus vaccine in the days ahead, and added that the Trump administration aimed to have most of the population of care home residents vaccinated by Christmas.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) expressed optimism regarding the rollout of the first round of COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday, but cautioned that the next few weeks are “going to be hell.”
Philanthropist Bill Gates warned Sunday that the failure of President Trump to formally recognize his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden and begin a White House transition process is “complicating” efforts to roll out a COVID-19 vaccine to the general public.
“The states have counted, certified their votes. The courts have resolved the disputes. It looks very much like the electors will vote for Joe Biden. And when they do, I hope that [President Trump] puts the country first,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Fox News host Chris Wallace confronted House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on his and other congressional Republicans’ support for a Texas lawsuit that would have thrown out the results of the presidential election in four key battleground states.
“The reason why the Supreme Court didn’t take it is because it’s an absurd idea to think that any state, or any number of states, no matter how good they are, can challenge another state’s right to run the election as they see fit. And also there’s no evidence.”
Attorney Alan Dershowitz said the Supreme Court turning down Texas’s election lawsuit sent a message that President Trump and his allies “can’t count on the judiciary” to help overturn the results of the election.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) expressed confidence on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden would not interfere with a federal investigation of his son Hunter Biden’s tax affairs.
