Fact Check: Joe Biden Said ‘We Didn’t Have’ the COVID Vaccine When He Took Office

President Joe Biden participated in his first town hall as president on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. During the event, which was hosted by CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper, Biden addressed questions from Cooper and an invite-only socially distanced audience. 

During a discussion about the administration’s COVID-19 vaccination distribution plan, Biden told Cooper: “We talked about it’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office, but a vaccinator. How do you get the vaccine into someone’s arm?”

Biden’s statement that there was no vaccine when he came into office is false, and in fact he indicated later in the program that there were doses available when he took office. 

The first COVID-19 vaccine was administered on December 14 to Sandra Lindsay, who works at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. About 10,000 vaccines were distributed that same day to hospital employees across the county. Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech shortly thereafter on December 21 at a hospital in Newark, Delaware. He then received the second shot a few weeks later on January 11.