Psaki refuses to praise Trump's role in vaccine-distribution plan: 'I don't think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died'

• Jen Psaki on Thursday refused to praise the Trump administration for its vaccine rollout.
• "I don't think anyone deserves credit when half a million people" in the US have died, she said.
• Biden said this week that there would be enough vaccines for every American adult by the end of May.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday refused to praise the Trump administration for its vaccine-distribution efforts before President Joe Biden took office.

"I don't think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died of this pandemic," Psaki told reporters after she was asked whether the Trump administration should receive any acclaim for its vaccine rollout.

Psaki said that when Biden became president, there were shortages of vaccines, vaccinators, and distribution locations that would be required to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

"There's no question, and all data points to the fact that there were not enough of any of those things when he took office," Psaki added.

Psaki's comments on Thursday echoed previous statements from Biden, who has called former President Donald Trump's handling of the public-health crisis "even more dire" than he had anticipated. By the time Trump left office, about 400,000 people in the country had died from the virus.

"It was one thing if we had enough vaccine, which we didn't, so we're pushing as hard as we can to get more vaccines manufactured," Biden said in February.

Biden said this week that the country was on track to secure enough vaccine supply for every American adult by the end of May.

"When we came into office, the prior administration had not contracted nearly enough vaccine for adults in America," Biden said Tuesday. "Today, we're announcing a major step forward."

In his last days in office, Trump regularly took credit for the development of two coronavirus vaccines by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna. In November, when the vaccines were in the clinical-trial stages, Trump became furious at the prospect of Biden being commended for the vaccine rollout, The Daily Beast reported.

Biden's national approval rating is at 51%, according to a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday. As of Thursday, nearly 520,000 people had died of COVID-19 in the US.