WASHINGTON (AP) – The Pentagon will deploy more than 1,100 troops to five vaccination centers in the first wave of increased military support for the White House campaign to get more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.
President Joe Biden asked within a month to set up 100 mass vaccination centers across the country. One of the five new military teams will go to a vaccination center in California. Other centers are expected to be announced soon.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked the Pentagon to provide as many as 10,000 service members to 100 centers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved the initial five teams, but the others will be approved in separate sections as FEMA identifies the other site locations.
Acting FEMA Administrator Robert Fenton told reporters that two vaccination sites that will be “primarily” federally managed will open in California on February 16, one at California State University, Los Angeles, and the other in Oakland.
According to FEMA and Pentagon officials, military troops will man one of the two centers in California. Staff from other parts of the federal government will be with the other one. More websites will open across the country as more doses of vaccine become available.
The military deployment comes because the country is in a race against a virus that causes mutations, which can make it easier to spread and cause more deadly diseases.
Only about 2% of Americans have received the required two-dose vaccination regimen that provides optimal protection with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines currently available. According to Mr Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases, the US needs to vaccinate 70% to 85% of its population to achieve widespread immunity.
That would be about 230 million to 280 million people, compared to 6.9 million who are currently fully immunized with two shots.
More help may be on the way soon. Johnson & Johnson announced this week it requires permission for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration for the vaccine, which requires only one shot.
Each of the Pentagon’s five military teams consists of 222 personnel, including 80 who will give the vaccines, as well as nurses and other support personnel. The teams would be able to deliver about 6,000 shots a day.
The five teams represent an increasing use of military active service in a vaccination campaign involving nearly 100 national guard teams in 29 countries across the country. National Guard leaders told The Associated Press that they are now considering training additional Guard members to give shots so they can also expand vaccinations in more remote and rural parts of their states.
Gen. Dan Hokanson, head of the National Guard Bureau, said the Guard has the capability to deploy about 200 additional teams. The training of other medical staff to give the vaccine, he said, may provide more.
“When we get to the point where all of our people who can do it (shots) have fully implemented it, they look at possible training opportunities if we are going to need more than that,” Hokanson said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make a difference and meet the need.”
The Pentagon said the FEMA teams could be a mix of active service, national guard and reserves. But Hokanson and Major General Jerry Fenwick, director of the joint surgeon’s waiting office, said the FEMA teams would be largely filled by active troops at this point. According to them, the governor is likely to be exploited by their governors for use in their own states. is more likely to be used in remote, rural locations.
The watch leaders said the nearly 100 mobile vaccination teams already active deliver more than 50,000 shots a day.
“As more vaccines get underway, there will surely be more demand for vaccines,” Fenwick said.
Pentagon officials have made it clear that they are wary of tapping the National Guard and Reserves, because in many cases those service members are already working in medical positions in their civilian lives at local hospitals and medical centers. Hokanson noted that although the guard could man up to 600 vaccination teams, he would have to reduce the number by about half due to such types of civilian work restrictions.
He said that Guard members so far only operate in their own states, but that they can go to neighboring states in the future, as long as they have enough teams.
Biden likened the campaign against COVID-19 to a war. In addition to deploying troops, he also appealed to the Cold War-era law, called the Defense Act, to manufacture vaccines, the COVID-19 test kits, and nitrile gloves used by health workers and vaccinators. , to strengthen. The law is called the DPA and essentially allows the government to assign missions to private enterprises during national emergencies.
White House COVID-19 supply coordinator Tim Manning said Friday the government wants to help drugmaker Pfizer clean up a bottleneck around vaccine-filling capability by giving the drugmaker first priority to access to get the required stock.
Manning also said the government is investing in six manufacturers to develop COVID-19 tests at home and carefully, with the aim of delivering 60 million tests by the end of the summer. Earlier this week, the White House announced a $ 230 million contract with Ellume, the maker of a home test approved by the Food and Drug Administration. No prescription is required for the over-the-counter test.
“The country is far behind where we need to be to test,” Manning said. Due to contract issues, he said he could not yet disclose the names of the companies.
Another round of contracts will build up the capacity to manufacture surgical gloves in the US, including the processing of the raw materials for the gloves. At the start of the pandemic last year, there were major shortages.
Manning said the goal is to produce more than 1 billion nitrile gloves inland by the end of this year.