WATCH: Biden falsely claims that America didn't have the COVID vaccine at start of his presidency

President Joe Biden claimed in a CNN Presidential townhall Tuesday that the "we didn't have" the coronavirus vaccine when he entered office on Jan. 20, 2021.

The first COVID-19 vaccine candidate to gain authorization from the FDA was the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 11, more than a month before Biden took office. Next was the Moderna vaccine which gained FDA authorization on December 18. Intensive-care nurse Sandra Lindsay was given one of the first shots of the vaccine in the US on Monday, December 14, New York Magazine reports.

"The biggest thing though, is you remember, when you and I took...I shouldn't say it that way as you remember, but when you and I talked last we talked about this one thing that the vaccine, which we didn't have when we came into office, but a vaccinator. How do you get the vaccine into someone's arm?" Biden said on CNN.

"So you need the paraphernalia, you need the needle, you need the mechanisms to be able to get it in, you have to have people who can inject it in people’s arms," Biden continued.

Vice President Kamala Harris similarly claimed in recent days that there was no strategy left in place by the Trump administration to vaccinate the country.

"The challenge is what I explained to the mayors, there was no stockpile [of vaccines],... There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations, we were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try to figure it out," Harris explained during an interview with Axios.

"In many ways we are starting from scratch on something that's been raging for almost an entire year," she continued.

At a press conference last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci said "we certainly are not starting from scratch" on vaccine distribution, directly contradicting Harris' claim.