The White House Covid-19 response team has defended the administration against the claim that they got ahead of scientists by announcing their plan to roll out Covid-19 booster shots.

“You’ve been very public about planning to roll out boosters, and you’ve also said you don’t want to put pressure on the scientific agencies,” said NPR’s White House correspondent Tamara Keith during Friday’s Covid-19 briefing. “How does being so public about this not put pressure on those agencies to make the decision that you’re planning for them to make?”

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy was first to address the question, explaining that the White House made their announcement on vaccine booster shots for two reasons: “Transparency and planning.”

In August, President Joe Biden gave a speech on his administration’s plan to provide booster shots to “every fully vaccinated American” adult eight months after they received their second shot, saying that the extra jab is “the best way to protect ourselves from new variants that could arise.”

“Pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC’s Committee of outside experts, we’ll be ready to start these boosters — this booster program during the week of September 20, in which time anyone fully vaccinated on or before January 20 will be eligible to get a booster shot,” Biden announced.

Murthy went on to explain that the scientific leaders on the response team, including CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, had publicly promised to follow data on the Covid-19 vaccine closely.

Murthy noted that they had previously said the administration would consider additional shots if data indicated that “protection was starting to wane.”

“That was one of the reasons we felt it was important to speak up when we saw on that signal in the data,” he added of their August announcement.

Murthy additionally pointed to the preparation needed to plan a nationwide roll-out of booster shots, saying, “You can’t flip a switch and make that happen overnight.”

“There is important planning that has to take place with localities, with state governments, with community organizations,” he said. “And so we laid out an initial plan for that purpose — to allow the time that we have now been using for the last few weeks — to do that all-important coordination so the public can be confident that if and when boosters were required, they would be there for them.”

“Finally, let me note this, which is in the announcement in August, and certainly in the time since then, we have always said and this initial plan would be contingent on the FDA and the CDC’s independent evaluation. We will follow that evaluation and their recommendations. We will make sure our final plan reflects it,” he continued. “What we were doing in August, and what we continued to do there, is really prioritizing transparency and preparation.”

Jeffrey Zients went on to add that when the vaccines were initially approved for emergency use in December, while Donald Trump was in office, “there was not a strong plan in place.”

“We saw that there was a lag in terms of getting shots in arms, so we want to make sure we’re ready for whatever decision the agencies make,” he added.

Watch above, via Spectrum News.

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