President-elect Joe Biden on Monday received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on live television as part of a growing effort to convince the American public the inoculations are safe.
The president-elect took a dose of Pfizer vaccine at a hospital not far from his Delaware home, hours after his wife, Jill Biden, did the same. The injections came the same day that a second vaccine, produced by Moderna, will start arriving in states. It joins Pfizer’s in the nation’s arsenal against the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 317,000 people in the United States and upended life around the globe.
“I’m ready,” said Biden, who was given a dose at a hospital in Newark, Delaware. The president-elect rolled the left sleeve of his turtleneck all the way up to his shoulder, then declined the option to count to three before the needle was inserted into his left arm.
“You just go ahead anytime you’re ready,” he told the nurse practitioner who administered the shot.
Biden emphasized the safety of the vaccine, and said President Donald Trump’s administration “deserves some credit” for getting the vaccine distribution process “off the ground.”
