Public service providers help people check-in at a drive-through COVID-19 vaccination site in Robstown, Texas, February 9, 2021.
Go Nakamura | Reuters
The Biden government will work with officials in Texas to build three new community vaccination centers, in Dallas, Arlington and Houston, a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response team announced Wednesday.
The three centers, which will be operational the week of Feb. 22, will allow health care providers to deliver a total of more than 10,000 shots per day, Jeff Zients, Biden’s Covid Tsar, told reporters during a White House newsletter. about the pandemic. “We are immediately deploying teams to work closely with the state and local jurisdiction,” he said.
Zients also said later on Wednesday that he will join New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in a press conference to formally announce the development of two new Covid vaccine centers in that state to help distribute shots to “disadvantaged communities.”
The announcements come days after the government said it would send active duty troops to California to aid the staff at Covid-19 vaccine sites there. Biden is trying to ramp up the pace of vaccinations in the US after a slower-than-expected rollout under former President Donald Trump’s administration, and federal officials are also forcing states to speed up shooting.
The troops will arrive in California this week and begin operations Monday, US officials said.
According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 33 million of the roughly 331 million Americans have received at least their first dose of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. And 9.8 million of those people have already gotten their second chance.
US officials are also hoping that vaccine supply will increase after Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine is approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, which could happen as early as this month. The FDA has scheduled a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Feb. 26 to discuss the vaccine, and the US could approve the vaccine the following day.
Last week, Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor on Biden’s Covid-19 response team, said that some healthcare providers regularly withhold vaccines for second injections, canceling vaccine appointments and preventing some Americans from receiving their first doses.
“We want to be clear that we understand why health care providers have done that, but that it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t happen,” he told reporters Feb. 1, adding that US officials know that Covid vaccine shipments were to states. often unpredictable during the early rollout in late December.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Wednesday that many states are already over vaccinating only caregivers, nursing homes and the elderly, and are starting to open shots for people with underlying health conditions.
He urged people with these conditions to get vaccinated, saying they are more vulnerable to severe Covid-19. “They are the very people who should get vaccinated,” he added. “This is something that will benefit you greatly.”