President Joe Biden has called for the creation of 100 mass vaccination centers across the country in a month. One of five new military teams will go to an open vaccination center in California. Other centers are expected to be announced soon.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked the Pentagon to supply up to 10,000 members of the service to staff at 100 centers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the five initial teams, but the others will be approved in separate stretches as FEMA identifies the other locations on the site.
FEMA Acting Administrator Robert Fenton told reporters that two federally “predominantly” vaccination sites will open in California on Feb. 16, one at California State University, Los Angeles and the other in Oakland.
Military troops will occupy one of the two centers in California, FEMA and Pentagon officials said. There will be staff from other parts of the federal government in the other. More sites will open across the country as more doses of vaccine become available.
Military deployment occurs as the nation is in a race against a virus that generates mutations that can make it spread more easily and cause more deadly diseases.
Only about 2% of Americans have received the required two-dose vaccination regimen that confers optimal protection with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines currently available. To achieve widespread immunity, or “ramada,” the U.S. must vaccinate between 70% and 85% of its population, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.
This would account for approximately 230 to 280 million people, compared to 6.9 million who are fully immunized with two shots.
Soon there would be more help. Johnson & Johnson announced this week that it is requesting emergency food use from the Food and Drug Administration for its vaccine, which only requires one shot.
Each of the Pentagon’s five military teams includes 222 personnel, including 80 who will make the shots, as well as nurses and other support personnel. The teams would be able to provide about 6,000 shots a day.
The five teams represent a growing use by the military in active duty for a vaccination campaign that already involves about 100 National Guard teams in 29 states across the country. National Guard leaders told The Associated Press that they were now considering training additional Guard members to give shots, so they could also expand vaccinations to more remote and rural areas of their states.
General Dan Hokanson, head of the National Guard Office, said the Guard has the capacity to launch about 200 additional teams. He noted that training other medical staff to make the vaccines, he said, could provide more.
“If we get to the point where we’ve fully deployed all of our people who can (give shots), they’ll be looking for possible training opportunities if we need more than that,” Hokanson said. “We will do everything to make a difference and satisfy whatever it is.”
The Pentagon has said the FEMA teams could be a mix of active service, national guard and reserves. But Hokanson and General Jerry Fenwick, director of the Guard’s Joint Surgery Office, said that at this time, FEMA teams are likely to be largely occupied by active-duty troops. The Guard, they said, will likely be approved by their governors for use in their own states. they are more likely to be used in remote rural locations.
Guard leaders said about 100 active mobile vaccination teams are already firing more than 50,000 a day.
“As there are more vaccines online, there will surely be more demand for vaccinators,” Fenwick said.
Pentagon officials have made it clear that they are careful to use the National Guard and Reserves, because in many cases these service members are already working in medical jobs in their civilian lives in local hospitals and medical centers. Hokanson noted that while the Guard could equip up to 600 teams of vaccines, it must cut that number by about half because of such restrictions on civilian jobs.
He said that so far members of the Guard only operate in their own states, but that they could go to neighboring states if necessary in the future, as long as they have enough equipment.
Biden has compared the campaign against COVID-19 to a war. Along with the deployment of troops, he also invoked a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to help strengthen the manufacture of vaccines, home COVID-19 test kits, and nitrile gloves used by health workers and vaccinators. The law, basically known as DPA, allows the government to assign missions to private companies during national emergencies.
Tim Manning, White House COVID-19 supply coordinator, said Friday that the administration was looking to help drug maker Pfizer eliminate bottlenecks around filling capabilities and end production of vaccines, giving the pharmacist the first priority to access the necessary supplies.
Manning also said the government is investing in six manufacturers to develop COVID-19 tests at home and at the point of care, with the goal of producing 60 million tests by the end of the summer. Earlier in the week, the White House announced a $ 230 million contract with Ellume, a manufacturer of a home test approved by the Food and Drug Administration. No prescription is required for the no-prescription test.
“The country is far behind where we need to be in testing,” Manning said. Due to contractual issues, he said he could not yet reveal the names of the companies.
Another round of contracts will increase the capacity to produce surgical gloves in the US, including the processing of raw materials for gloves. Last year there was a widespread shortage at the start of the pandemic.
Manning said the goal is to produce more than 1 billion nitrile gloves nationwide by the end of this year.
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