COVID-19 vaccine will not be made mandatory: Joe Biden

US President-elect Joe Biden said that Americans will not be forced to take the coronavirus vaccine.

Biden was responding to a question if COVID-19 vaccine will be made mandatory, at a news conference in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden, who is due to take office on January 20, said he will make sure that the vaccine is both free and available and that any follow up on the vaccine is free and available that relates to any health complications from it.

“I will do everything in my power as the President of the US to encourage people to do the right thing, and when they do it, demonstrate that it matters. That’s why I said in my inaugural speech I’m going to ask people to commit for 100 days to wear a mask, not because I’m asking it for any reason to punish-this is not a political issue,” he said.

“It has become one. But if people do it for 100 days in the middle of what will be still a raging crisis and the vaccine is able to be distributed, they are going to see deaths drop off the edge,” he said.

“They are going to see hundreds of thousands of people not getting sick; and my hope is they will be then inclined to say okay, it’s worth the patriotic duty to go ahead and protect other people,” Biden said.

Biden said he is willing to get inoculated in public to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety.

“You’re going to see tens of millions of Americans taking the vaccine and you’re going to see the President of the United States and three of the four living former Presidents doing it publicly as well. It’s going to take some effort to rebuild confidence in science because it’s been so diminished in this administration thus far,” Biden said.

(Edits by EP News Bureau)