Vox Sentences - Slow-going for Operation Warp Speed

The US coronavirus vaccine rollout is falling short of Trump administration targets; the British Parliament signs off on a Brexit deal.

Sentences will be off on Thursday and Friday this week for the holidays. We'll be back in the new year.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters.

• 2020 is almost over — and with only about a day left, it’s becoming clear that the initial vaccine rollout in the US is badly behind pace. About 2.1 million people have received the vaccine to date, far fewer than the Trump administration’s goal of 20 million vaccinations before January 1. [CNN / Kristen Holmes and Arlette Saenz]
• Distribution is also lagging, more than two weeks after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine: Around 11 million total vaccine doses have been distributed around the US so far. [Stat / Nicholas Florko, Olivia Goldhill, and Helen Branswell]
• Among other roadblocks, storing the vaccine — which must be kept cold — has posed a challenge, as has determining who gets access to the vaccine first. [Vox / Umair Irfan]
• The pace of vaccinations could increase in the new year, though. The most recent Covid-19 relief bill from Congress includes $8.75 billion in funding for vaccine distribution. [CBS News / Meg Oliver]
• President-elect Joe Biden has also promised to speed up the vaccine rollout: On Tuesday, he reaffirmed his goal of administering 100 million doses of the vaccine in his first 100 days in office. [AP / Alexandra Jaffe]
• Trump, meanwhile, has been almost entirely absent from the vaccine effort, tweets notwithstanding. “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Get moving!” [Twitter / Donald J. Trump]
• A widespread vaccination campaign can’t come soon enough: More than 3,600 people died Tuesday from Covid-19, and the country reported more than 201,000 new cases. [New York Times]
• In California, ICUs remain full statewide, with nearly 20,000 people hospitalized with the coronavirus. [SF Chronicle / Aidin Vaziri]
• And Colorado on Tuesday reported the first US case of a new Covid-19 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom, which is believed to be as much as 70 percent more transmissible. [The Gazette / Erin Prater]