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The Biden administration is increasing the weekly supply of COVID-19 vaccines to states and territories by 16% next week and plans to give governors longer notice of upcoming vaccine allocations, according to several state officials briefed by the White House Tuesday.
The vaccine supply to states, territories and Native American tribes will increase to 10 million doses next week, from 8.6 million and will continue at that rate for the next three weeks. Governors will receive a three-week forecast of their vaccine allocations, which will give them more time to prepare vaccine distribution plans.
President Biden is expected to announce the changes to the country’s vaccine distribution plan at a White House event later Tuesday.
The federal government plans to purchase 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine – 100 million doses of Pfizer vaccine and 100 million doses of Moderna vaccine, participants said. Next week, the administration will send 5.7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 4.3 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
This purchase increases the federal government’s total vaccine order from 400 million current doses to 600 million doses, which would allow the federal government to vaccinate 300 million Americansa senior Biden administration official told CBS News on Tuesday.
The newly purchased doses – which will be produced “over the summer” – do not, at this time, increase the timeline for all Americans to receive a vaccine if they so choose.
“It’s going to take us several months for us to be able to tell Americans it’s ‘open season’, as Dr Fauci calls it, to sign up for vaccinations,” the senior official said. administration. said. “But with today’s announcement, we have now purchased enough vaccine to immunize 300 million Americans, that’s good news.”
Governors from both sides were briefed Tuesday afternoon by Jeff Zients, coordinator of the Biden administration’s COVID response, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky and Army General Gustav F. Perna, which oversees Operation Warp Speed, the national vaccine distribution program. launched by the Trump administration.
Representatives of several governors from both sides shared information from the appeal with CBS News.
Several state officials working for the Democratic and Republican governors have expressed their relief at the increased vaccine supply and the decision to give state leaders a three-week schedule.
“Three weeks anticipation is a life” when it comes to planning ahead, said an appeal participant who works for a Republican governor.
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont called the increase in supply and the new schedule “very helpful.”
“The supply has been a bit of a black box for about a month now,” Lamont said, according to the audio of the call obtained by CBS News. “We couldn’t plan more than a week in advance.”
But some governors on the call complained that the CDC’s current system for tracking vaccine distribution draws unfair comparisons between states and territories.
Among other things, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told Wallensky that the CDC’s tracking system is “misleading” because some states keep second doses of the vaccine in reserve for people who have received their first vaccine, while other states choose to distribute doses as they receive them.
“Counting that second dose into the equation, I think, is misleading,” Cuomo said on the call.
“Certainty is very valuable to us,” Cuomo also said, according to the audio of the call. “We never got everything we needed in this whole Covid situation – neither from the federal government nor from the private sector. But just having facts and certainty is a very big advantage.”
Other governors have asked if the CDC could better explain to the public the breakdown of a state’s vaccine allocation – how much is considered a “first dose,” and how much is considered a second dose. Doing so, these governors pointed out, would help temper and educate the public about how quickly the plans are being distributed.
Officials in the Biden administration also told governors that the federal government plans to continue distributing the vaccine on a per capita basis instead of speeding up distribution in states with faster and more effective plans – an idea that had been floated. in the final weeks of the Trump administration. The decision to maintain the per capita distribution is seen as a coup d’état for small states concerned with vaccinating their populations.
State officials have also said they were impressed by the seriousness of the Biden administration’s initial contacts with governors, even during the transition of power.
“These calls have been very cordial during both administrations,” said one participant, “but my boss is grateful for the seriousness with which the Biden administration has spoken.”
Michael Kaplan contributed to this report.
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