Biden vows 100 million shots in first 100 days

Washington: US President-elect Joe Biden has promised to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to 100 million people during the first three months of his incoming administration, pledging "100 million shots in the first 100 days".

At an event from Delaware to introduce his pandemic response team on Tuesday, Biden laid out his top three priorities for the start of his new government. He repeated his previous calls for all Americans to wear masks for 100 days to prevent the spread of the virus and said he'd mandate doing so in federal buildings and on public transportation, while also making the new promise to distribute 100 million vaccines shots over the same period.

Biden also said he believed that the virus can be brought under enough control to reopen "the majority of schools" within his first 100 days.

Those pledges came even as Biden struck a sombre tone about the toll the coronavirus has already taken. He said that, after about nine months of living with the pandemic, the US is "at risk of becoming numb to its toll on all of us". The president-elect specifically noted the virus's "disproportionate" effects on Americans of colour, calling it a "mass casualty" for many minority groups.