Biden administration orders 200 million additional vaccine doses, expects every American to be vaccinated by July

While speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, Biden said the additional purchase of vaccines would increase supply by 50 percent to 600 million doses, enabling every American to be vaccinated by July according to The Hill.

"We've now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans, and now we're working to get those vaccines into the arms of people," Biden said "The new strains emerging create immense challenges, and masking is still the easiest thing to do to save lives," he added.

The Biden administration said last month that it planned to purchase an additional 100 million doses each of the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines.

The US paid approximately $2 billion to Pfizer for the additional doses, and $1.65 billion to Moderna, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

However, the additionally purchased doses are not immediately available, which means the current supply shortages may continue for some time until they are.

During his speech, Biden placed blame on former President Trump for not taking the virus seriously.

"My predecessor - to be very blunt about it - did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans," Biden said.

The Trump administration reportedly obtained 400 million doses total of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to The Hill.