Ex-President Donald Trump has taken credit for the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US.
In a statement on Tuesday, Trump said he hopes Americans remember that if it was not for him they would not be getting the “beautiful shot for five years”.
“I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the Covid-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) vaccine, that if I wasn’t president, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers,” he said.
The US began its vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine on December 14.
By January 10, the country, which is the worst-hit, had recorded at least 22,255,827 infections and about 373,463 deaths.
The Trump administration was criticised for downplaying the threat of the infection and its slow response at the beginning of the pandemic.
Trump’s government was also accused of slow adoption of widespread testing, which critics said could have slowed down the spread of the disease.
The US, among others, had blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic, saying the country did not alert the rest of the world to the disease in time and that it mismanaged the spread of the virus, but China repeatedly denied these allegations.
As of January 20, about 16.5 million vaccines had been administered in the US.
Upon assumption of office, President Joe Biden had criticised the speed of the vaccine roll-out under Trump’s administration, describing it as “a dismal failure thus far”.
Biden had said he wanted to see 100 million vaccinations administered in his first 100 days in office and that his administration will have enough vaccines for every adult American by the end of May.
According to data obtained from Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of daily vaccinations has soared past the 2 million mark.
About 95.7 million people have also been vaccinated in the country.
More than 29 million people in the US have been infected with the virus according to worldometers.
A total of 542,191 patients have died from complications of the disease while 20,640,270 people have recovered.
