‘I failed’: Operation Warp Speed leader takes responsibility for Covid-19 vaccine distribution confusion

The military leader of Operation Warp Speed, Gen. Gustave Perna, said Saturday that he takes sole responsibility for last week’s confusion over the allotment of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to states, which led more than a dozen governors to complain that they had received far fewer doses than originally promised. “Where I failed — I failed, nobody else failed — was to have a clear understanding of that cadence” of the vaccine distribution process, Perna said, adding: “It was my fault. I gave guidance. I am the one that approved the forecast sheets.” The striking mea culpa — rare among U.S. officials in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic — came during a briefing in which Perna, the chief operating officer of OWS, said repeatedly that he had underestimated the time required to get the vaccine doses approved for distribution to states. The chaos over allotments followed labeling confusion that caused hospital pharmacists at several health systems to throw away one in every six doses of the first vaccines distributed.