His remarks came amid intensifying concern that the Covid vaccine distribution has been slower than expected, with the Trump administration missing its initial goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans by the end of 2020. So far, just over 4 million Americans have received their first of two Covid shots, and another 13 million doses have been delivered to states, according to the CDC.

Federal officials have said the U.S. will need to vaccinate roughly 80 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus and are looking for ways to quickly ramp up immunization efforts as cases continue to soar. The U.S. has reported more than 20.4 million cases and 350,000 deaths so far.

Earlier Sunday, top federal infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci cautioned that the government shouldn’t deviate from the doses and schedules used in clinical trials on the vaccines, adding that distribution efforts need to be more efficient.

“We know what the science tells us,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” without directly addressing Slaoui’s suggestion. “So my feeling … is let’s do it the way the clinical trials have instructed us to do it. But let’s get more efficient into getting it into people’s arms.”

Fauci and Surgeon General Jerome Adams said they are working with governors to ramp up vaccinations.

“We have to understand that this virus also occurred in the midst of a surge. And a lot of the local capacity to be able to vaccinate was being used for testing and responding to surges,” Adams said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But the good news is that we’re seeing it quickly ramp up, thanks to our state partners. “

The U.S., like most countries, has held back half of its supplies of Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, to ensure that everyone who received their first dose receives the second dose. Meanwhile, the U.K., last week shifted its guidance to get as many people as possible their first dose, while potentially delaying the second dose, sparking concern among scientists who say there is no evidence to suggest the vaccine is effective without completing the full regimen.

Slaoui balked at the idea of taking a similar approach in the U.S., saying it would not be responsible to give initial doses without ensuring people get their second dose without data to back it up.

“I think everyone needs to calm down,” he said. “I think we need to tone down the rhetoric. This is already a volatile situation. It’s like a tinderbox and throwing lit matches into it and so I think the kind of hyperbole we’re seeing, the kind of angry language.”

He said that some Democrats had accused him of “treason.”

Critics have pointed out that despite repeated, unsupported allegations of fraud by President Donald Trump, every state certified its results — some of them after full recounts — and that dozens of court decisions have upheld the validity of Biden’s victory on Nov. 3. They’ve also noted that Republicans are being selective in challenging results, alleging fraud in certain states won by Biden but not in down-ballot races won by Republicans in those very same states.

“A fundamental, defining feature of a democratic republic is the right of the people to elect their own leaders,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who has acknowledged Biden’s win in his state and nationally.

Regardless, Cruz indicated he had his doubts that the election was lawful.

“We went into this election with the country deeply divided, deeply polarized,” Cruz said on Sunday, “and we’ve seen in the last two months unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, and that’s produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country. I think we in Congress have an obligation to do something about that. We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the democratic system.”

He also said he wished the Supreme Court, which twice declined to hear challenges to Biden’s election, had agreed to sort out the issue — and said that Trump had asked him to make his argument before the nation’s top court.

“I wish the Supreme Court had taken this case,” Cruz said. “There were two opportunities to take this case. One out of Pennsylvania, one out of Texas, and in both instances, the lawyers asked me to argue those cases, and so with regard to the Texas case, President Trump called me and said, ‘Ted, would you do the oral argument in this case if the court takes it?’ I told the president, ‘Absolutely, I’d be happy to do it.’ I wish the court had taken one or both of those cases. I think the Supreme Court would be a better forum for resolving those issues.”

Cruz said that challenging the results of the election was not an ideal thing for Congress to be doing, but that it seemed better to him than merely accepting the results.“Frankly, two pretty lousy choices,” he said.

In order for the GOP congressional challenge to succeed, the House and Senate would have to vote against certification when the Electoral College results are presented in a joint session of Congress on Wednesday with Vice President Mike Pence at the helm. Though Republicans can delay Biden’s certification by a matter of hours — a challenge to the results would lead to debate in both the House and Senate, then a vote — their effort is almost certainly doomed to fail. Democrats hold a majority in the House, and several leading Republicans in the closely divided Senate have made it clear they won’t vote to back the GOP challenge.

Some Senate Republicans — including Toomey, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,and Ben Sasse of Nebraska — have been vocal in condemning the challenge, painting it as a threat to the rule of law. “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic,” Romney said in a statement.

Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “I think it’s a little bit of a Don Quixote jousting-at-windmills efforts. I think it is designed — certainly it will fail. Joe Biden is our president-elect and he will be confirmed in that capacity.’

One of the other Republicans pledging to reject the election results, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sparred with host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday over the legitimacy of the crisis that Republicans are now purporting to end.

“You got to ask yourself, when you tell people a million times that something was stolen or something was fraud and then they believe it, I think you need to look in the mirror,” Todd said to him.

“Chuck, look in your mirror,” Johnson replied.

Other Senate veterans who are planning to challenge the Biden win are Josh Hawley of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana, Steve Daines of Montana, John N. Kennedy of Louisiana and James Lankford of Oklahoma. Four others are newly elected: Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Leaders of the pro-Trump challenge in the House include Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jody Hice of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

As it stands, Biden is expected to end up with 306 Electoral College votes, and Trump with 232.

Now, Ossoff’s Senate campaign against Republican incumbent David Perdue, with the majority at stake in Georgia’s runoffs, is demonstrating a big shift in what Democrats believe will work in the most closely divided places in the country, as Georgia’s 6th District was in 2017 and the state of Georgia is now in 2020.

Ossoff called his tandem Senate campaigns with fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock the “biggest election in the history of the state of Georgia” before a crowd of more than a hundred supporters at a drive-in rally here Saturday night, standing on a stage in the rain as car horns blared.

“Donald Trump is leaving. He may not know it yet, but he’s on the way out,” Ossoff said. “And Georgia voters sent Donald Trump packing. You did that, Macon. So the question now is what comes next.”

In interviews and at his events, Democratic allies say Ossoff hasn’t necessarily changed, but has sharpened as a candidate. Stacey Abrams, the unofficial leader of Georgia Democrats who ran for governor in 2018, said that Ossoff is speaking directly to voters’ biggest concern in his Senate campaign. In an interview, Abrams called running for office a “steep learning curve” and said Ossoff has “mastered it admirably.”

“He has become such a seasoned, thoughtful candidate who understands the needs of voters, but also understands the art of communication,” Abrams said.

That art has created big moments for Ossoff, who called Perdue a “crook” over controversial stock trades during a debate in the general election, a moment that drove donations and attention on social media in the closing days of the election. He used a live Fox News interview last week to escalate an attack against GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is running against Warnock.

While Democrats have celebrated Ossoff’s flair in 2020, Republicans have scoffed at those viral moments, and they point out that his debate moment didn’t amount to a win in November. Perdue narrowly missed the 50 percent threshold to win the race outright, but he ran about 88,000 votes ahead of Ossoff. Speaking on the campaign trail, Perdue adds up his votes and those for the Libertarian candidate, arguing that 52.5 percent of the state’s voters rejected Ossoff and his “Democratic liberal, socialist agenda.“

“In every other state but one, I’ve already won this race,” Perdue told supporters at an event Wednesday, noting that Georgia’s unusual runoff rule requires a majority to win, as opposed to just finishing first. Perdue had to leave the campaign trail the next day to quarantine after a close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19.

As Ossoff has evolved as a candidate, he has also been at the leading edge of broader changes in Georgia that put Perdue in political danger. Six years ago, Perdue won his first election handily while performing strongly in Atlanta’s ancestrally Republican suburbs — such as Cobb County, which voted for Perdue by 13 percentage points six years ago.

But Trump lost the county by 2 points in 2016. Biden and Ossoff both carried it by double digits in November, though Biden slightly outpaced the Senate candidate’s performance.

Ossoff’s race helped push the rapid change in that area, which continued when Abrams ran for governor and Rep. Lucy McBath flipped Georgia’s 6th District for Democrats in 2018. Angelika Kausche, a volunteer for Ossoff’s campaign in 2017, said his House campaign gave her and others a way to channel frustration over Trump’s election. Kausche ended up running for, and flipping, a suburban state House district.

“We were all disappointed that he didn’t win, but he came very close and basically showed us that this idea that this is all so Republican is a myth,” Kausche said.

“There were a lot of people like me who came out of their safe space saying ‘I’m an independent,’ and saying we have to stand up for who we are and the values we represent, and come out and really fight for Democrats,” Kausche added, crediting Ossoff’s campaign for the shift.

Ossoff has built on top of that campaign now, funded by the $100 million he raked in for the runoff. His campaign has touted its get-out-the-vote efforts, including announcing this week that it hired 2,000 young, mostly Black organizers to conduct outreach in their communities and online.

“What I learned in 2017 was about the power of ordinary people when they band together to build political power and to make change,” Ossoff told reporters on Saturday. “This turnout effort that’s happening in Georgia right now is totally unprecedented, and the engagement and the involvement of young people is unprecedented here in Georgia.”

The Republican take on Ossoff has also changed somewhat. The party hit him in 2017 for having a thin resume and living outside his district. This year, along with continuing to attack his resume, Republican groups have added an onslaught of TV ads linking him to China because his film company was paid a licensing fee by a Hong Kong media company to air a documentary. GOP opponents have also taken to calling Ossoff a socialist, an attack levied against most Democratic candidates in 2020.

“Only a 33-year-old trust fund socialist could spend the better part of three years campaigning for jobs he isn’t qualified for,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for Senate Republicans’ campaign arm.

Corry Bliss, a GOP operative who led the super PAC that attacked Ossoff during his House campaign, argued Ossoff was competitive then and now because of his fundraising.

“Raising $100 million from California could help anyone cover up flaws,” Bliss said. “At the end of the day Jon Ossoff’s undoing will be the same as 2017, that he’s an unaccomplished liberal.”

But Democrats’ Senate hopes rest on the fact that Georgia has continued to evolve in the past four years. Biden became the first Democrat to carry the state in a presidential race in close to three decades, after Abrams narrowly lost her race for governor two years ago. The Senate races will be close, but the early turnout among Black and young voters has given Democrats some optimism.

After Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz rallied with Ossoff in front of City Hall on Saturday, Girtz said Democratic enthusiasm in Georgia has snowballed since Ossoff demonstrated in 2017 how close the party was to breaking through in new places.

“As a member of the Democratic Party here in Georgia, I feel like we’re a train rolling down the tracks and we’re never going back to statewide exclusively Republican leadership,” Girtz said.

He also credited Ossoff with focusing outside the major population centers of the state, a necessity since Ossoff started the Senate race universally known in the Atlanta area but without a footprint in the rest of Georgia.

Ossoff has talked about his visit to Cuthbert, a small town in the southwest part of the state where a rural hospital closed this year, emphasizing his focus on health care. Between the rallies in Athens and Macon, Ossoff held an event in Eatonton, a town of 7,000 in the center of the state.

“These are not major meccas, but you’ve got to activate people in every town of 5,000 and 10,000 and 100,000 people,” Girtz said. “It can’t just be Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta, Athens.”