WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden said that the US is experiencing a "very dark winter" due to the increase of coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths and infections.

"Truthfully, we remain in a very dark winter. Infection rates are up we're up to 3,000 to 4,000 deaths a day as we approach a grim milestone of 400,000 deaths in America. That's staggering, to state the obvious," Biden said in a statement in Wilmington, Delaware.

"The vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure thus far."

"The more people we vaccinate and the faster we do it, the sooner we can put this pandemic behind us and the sooner we can build our economy back better and get back to our lives and to our loved ones," Biden added.

"As we've seen during this pandemic, we can't solve our problems as a divided nation. The only way we come through this is if we come through together," he stated.

"This is a time to set big goals, to pursue them with courage and conviction, because the health of the nation is literally at stake."

According to fact sheet released by the Biden transition team, "President-elect Biden has asked Congress to make an historic investment in expanding the public health workforce, funding 100,000 public health workers to nearly triple the country's community health roles."

"The process of establishing priority groups was driven by science, but the implementation has been too rigid and confusing. We now see doses of vaccines sitting in freezers unused while people who want the vaccine cannot get it." — KUNA