[ad_1]
President Joe Biden has called for the establishment of 100 mass immunization centers in the country in one month. One of five new military teams will travel to the opening of a vaccination center in California. Other centers should be announced soon.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked the Pentagon to provide up to 10,000 service personnel to staff 100 centers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved the initial five teams, but the others will be approved in separate installments as FEMA identifies the remaining sites.
FEMA Interim Administrator Robert Fenton told reporters that two vaccination sites that will be “primarily” run by the federal government will open in California on February 16, one at California State University, Los Angeles, and the other in Oakland.
Military troops will occupy one of the two California centers, FEMA and Pentagon officials said. Staff from other parts of the federal government will be at each other. More sites will open across the country as more doses of the vaccine become available.
The military deployment comes as the nation is in a race against a virus that spawns mutations that can make it spread more easily and inflict more deadly diseases.
Only about 2% of Americans have received the required two-dose vaccination schedule that confers optimal protection with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines currently available. To achieve widespread, or “herd,” immunity, the United States must vaccinate 70 to 85 percent of its population, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist.
This would represent around 230 to 280 million people, compared to 6.9 million who are currently fully vaccinated with two vaccines.
Further help may be available soon. Johnson & Johnson announced this week that it is seeking emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its vaccine, which requires only one injection.
Each of the Pentagon’s five military teams includes 222 staff, including 80 who will administer the vaccines, as well as nurses and other support staff. The teams would be able to deliver around 6,000 shots per day.
The five teams represent an increasing use of the active-duty military in a vaccination campaign that already involves nearly 100 National Guard teams in 29 states across the country. National Guard leaders told The Associated Press they now plan to train additional Guard members to donate vaccines, so they can also expand vaccinations to more remote and rural parts. of their states.
General Dan Hokanson, head of the National Guard Bureau, said the Guard has the capacity to deploy around 200 additional teams. Training other medical staff to administer the vaccines, he said, would potentially be more helpful.
“If we get to the point where we have fully implemented all of our people who can (kick), then they’re looking for potential training opportunities if we’re going to need more than that,” Hokanson said. “We will do everything to make a difference and respond to whatever is needed.”
The Pentagon has said FEMA teams could be a mix of active duty, National Guard and Reserves. But Hokanson and Maj. Gen. Jerry Fenwick, director of the joint surgeon’s custody office, said that at this point, FEMA teams would be more likely to be largely filled with active-duty troops. The Guard, they said, will likely be called upon by their governors for use in their own states. are more likely to be used in remote rural areas.
Guard leaders said nearly 100 already active mobile vaccination teams were delivering more than 50,000 vaccines per day.
“As more and more vaccines come online, there will surely be more demand for vaccinators,” Fenwick said.
Pentagon officials have made it clear that they are careful not to exploit the National Guard and reserves, as in many cases these servicemen are already working in medical jobs in their civilian lives at local hospitals and medical centers. Hokanson noted that while the Guard may staff up to 600 vaccination teams, it needs to cut that number by about half because of these types of civilian employment restrictions.
He said that so far, members of the Guard only operate in their own states, but could travel to neighboring states if necessary in the future, provided they have enough teams.
Biden 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 bolster the manufacture of vaccines, home COVID-19 test kits and nitrile gloves. used by health workers and vaccinators. Called DPA, the law essentially authorizes the government to assign assignments to private companies in the event of a national emergency.
Tim Manning, the White House COVID-19 supply coordinator, said on Friday the administration was looking to help drugmaker Pfizer remove the bottleneck around filling and finishing capabilities with production vaccine by giving the drug maker first priority to access needed supplies.
Manning also said the government is investing in six manufacturers to develop home and point-of-care COVID-19 tests, 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, maker of a Food and Drug Administration-approved home test. No prescription is required for the over-the-counter test.
“The country is way behind where we need to be in the tests,” Manning said. Due to contract issues, he said he could not yet reveal the names of the companies.
Another round of contracts will strengthen the ability to produce surgical gloves in the United States, including the processing of raw materials for the gloves. There were widespread shortages at the start of the pandemic last year.
Manning said the goal was to produce more than a billion nitrile gloves nationwide by the end of this year.
Copyright © 2021 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
[ad_2]
Source link