mr. slaoui, it was 20 million americans would be vaccina vaccinated. we heard it from you and a higher number from the president. >> if i may. >> go ahead but it wasn't -- >> would you like to listen to my answer? >> it wasn't the doses, it was the people. >> it was the doses and based on that, we have worked with the states, each one of the states to put together a plan with them whereby we would ship these doses to them. we have allocated the doses that the state department from each state, sorry, the head department from each states have actually ordered the doses. they told us where to send them. we shipped them to those areas and to those locations. now, indeed, it is lower than what we were hoping for. i believe personally that the granular knowledge at the level of granularity needed to be able to say we need to ship a thousand doses to this cvs pharmacy or to this long-term care facility in a particular state, in a particular rural area, resides with the states. we are available and ready to help the states as they ask specifically for help. we

mr. slaoui. it was that 20 million americans would be vaccinated.d of the promise that was made. listen to this. >> we will deliver 100 million doses of a safe vaccine before the end of the year and maybe quite a bit sooner than that. >> we expect to have approximately 40 million doses by the end of this year, so that would allow us to vaccinate 20 million people in december. >> overall in the month of december, between the two vaccines, the pfizer and the moderna vaccine, we expect to have immunized 20 million of our american people and keeping 20 million doses for their second immunization a few weeks later. >> oh, okay. i didn't even realize you were part of this. mr. slaoui, you said 20 million people. >> yes, obviously i did say that. >> yeah, he certainly did, as did others, including the president. i'm joined by rick bright. he's an immunologist, vaccine researcher who resigned from the trump administration last year as a whistle-blower. do you agree with the fda that changing the dosing or changing the scheduling in vaccines right now is pre

mr. secretary. >> thank you very much, and i did want to note as you saw dr. slaoui is with us on stage and will be available for question. he just didn't feel the need to have an opening statement but go ahead. >> we will open up for questions, operator. a friend reminder when asking a question you state your name and publication and please keep your questions as short as possible so we can get as many as we can and the time that we have. i will turn to the operator. >> thank you so very much. if you would like to ask a question please press star and in one on your phone and be sure to provide your name and media outlet. our first is from drew armstrong with bloomberg news. your line is open. >> it's true. i run a vaccine track here and had a question for you all about what is actually been the problem and administering shots in some of the states that are showing low numbers of percentage of the distributions to them use? because clearly there's a number of states that are working through between 70-80% other distributions on a rolling basis but others, alabama, ge