The Department of Defense will hold an information session later Friday with more information on the military deployment, Slavitt said. The Biden government has said it will reimburse the states for using the National Guard to aid vaccination efforts, but this will be the first time military personnel of active duty have been involved.
The move, which Austin approved Thursday, will send 1,110 active-duty military personnel to five FEMA Covid vaccination centers, according to a DoD information sheet. It will include 444 in two Army teams, and teams of 222 each from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, according to DoD.
Each team has 80 people administering vaccines, 15 registered nurses, 57 clinical staff, 15 people for ‘command and control’ and 55 for ‘general purposes’, according to DoD.
FEMA has requested 10,000 DoD staff to assist at 100 vaccination sites, but according to DoD it is still being considered.
Where the staff will depend on FEMA requirements, according to DoD.
Attempts to vaccinate Americans have been slow to begin with, but have improved slightly in recent times and have vaccinated between 1.3-1.5 million people a day in the US. The White House has promised to speed up the process, and has promised to vaccinate at least 100 million Americans within the Biden administration’s first 100 days.
With potentially more transmissible Covid-19 variants popping up in the US, Biden’s government is facing more pressure to speed up its vaccination efforts. As part of the government’s plan to combat the variants, the Food and Drug Administration plans to introduce new standards for vaccine boosters, tests and medicines in the coming weeks, POLITICO reported.