Biden administration continues vaccination campaign with three new mass vaccination sites in Texas

The two vaccination sites – one at York College in Jamaica, Queens, and the other at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn – will administer around 3,000 vaccines per day. These sites will open the same week as the Texas sites.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration tries to increase production and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines amid a pandemic that continues to devastate the country. Both announcements focused on equitable distribution of immunization across the country and on underserved and vulnerable populations.

“They’re going to get, meet a dire need by getting the vaccine to the people who need it most,” Cuomo said of the new vaccination sites.

The Biden administration said last week that the federal government would partner with California to launch two new community vaccination centers in communities that have been hit hard by the pandemic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is setting up two vaccination sites in Oakland and east of Los Angeles that will open next Tuesday, FEMA Acting Administrator Bob Fenton said.

“We are creating more places where Americans can get vaccinated,” Zients said in a briefing Wednesday. “To do this, we accelerated financial support to strengthen community immunization centers nationwide with more than $ 3 billion in federal funding in 35 states, tribes and territories.

Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote a letter to Biden proposing the use of each team stadium as a site for mass vaccination. Biden told CBS in an interview that aired Sunday that he intended to accept Goodell on his offer.

In addition to the stadiums, Zients said the administration was building new vaccination centers across the country “from scratch” in community centers, school gyms and parking lots.

The White House also announced this week that it will increase the global weekly vaccine supply to 11 million doses nationwide starting this week. After announcing a plan to send vaccines directly to retail pharmacies, the White House has said it will send part of the Covid-19 vaccine supply directly to community health centers starting next week as part of an effort to reach underserved areas.

“We are putting equity at the forefront, partnering with states to increase immunizations in the most affected and hard-to-reach communities,” Zients said Wednesday, reiterating the administration’s attention to the equity.

There are two Covid-19 vaccines that have received emergency use authorization from the United States Food and Drug Administration: one from Pfizer / BioNTech and the other from Moderna. Both require two doses given several weeks apart in order to achieve nearly 95% effectiveness.

If the FDA clears a vaccine by Johnson & Johnson for emergency use, it should have less than 10 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine available, confirms a federal health official.

CNN first reported that this would be the amount of vaccine available when cleared on February 1.

The official said the number of doses available would be in the single-digit millions if cleared in the coming weeks. That number would rise to double-digit millions in March, but still less than 20 million doses. They expect it to reach 20 or 30 million doses by April.

Johnson & Johnson’s single-injection Covid-19 vaccine was found to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe disease in a global phase 3 trial, but 85% in severe disease, the company said on Friday . The vaccine was 72% effective against moderate and severe disease in the United States.