By Carl O’Donnell and Manas Mishra
(Reuters) – The U.S. government will begin sending COVID-19 vaccines directly to community health centers next week in an effort to speed up vaccinations and ensure doses reach vulnerable people, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.
The government will send doses to 250 centers nationwide selected based on their proximity to vulnerable groups, such as the homeless and those with limited English proficiency. Usually, vaccine doses will go to state governments for distribution to health centers.
Eventually, the effort will expand to more than 1,300 community health centers.
The federal government will initially distribute 1 million doses of vaccines to the health centers and increase from there, they added.
The program is part of a broader push by the Biden administration to increase access to COVID-19 shots, with the goal of administering 100 million doses during the first 100 days of Biden. Biden has also made it a priority to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly in terms of race, ethnicity and economic status.
The U.S. government is already on track to reach its goal of 100 million shots within 100 days, which only required the distribution levels of the previous government to be modestly exceeded. Biden said in January he could aim for 150 million shots at that time, but his press secretary later said 100 million was still the official target.
The White House began coordinating vaccine deliveries to 6,500 pharmacies this week with the goal of reaching about 40,000.
“We provide tools to communities across the country to do this work, and look forward to working with them to ensure equity,” said Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, said during a press call.
The United States has increased the distribution of vaccines from 8.6 million doses to 11 million doses since Biden took office three weeks ago, said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator.
The White House has said it intends to continue the number of doses it distributes and will use the federal government’s emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to increase vaccine production. Johnson & Johnson is not expected to receive authorization for its experimental COVID vaccine until this month, which will further increase the stock of the vaccine.
(Reported by Carl O’Donnell; edited by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman)