President Joseph Biden requests to enlist the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
Biden released a plan on his first day in office that allows FEMA to take a prominent role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, according to The Washington Post.
“Its mission will be to ‘provide federal support to existing or new community vaccination centers and mobile clinics across the country,’” The Washington Post reported.
According to CBS News, FEMA’s “Prepare to Deploy Order” has asked the Pentagon for up to 10,000 troops to support 100 COVID-19 vaccination sites, with the intention of providing 450,000 vaccinations a day. The order has not yet been approved, but it is expected to be.
“Sending troops to help set up sites, assist with logistics and even put shots in arms is something the Defense Department is ‘actively considering,’” Max Rose, senior adviser for the secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin III, said, according to The New York Times.
The new FEMA sites will not be required of any state. State governors are allowed to deny deployments.
“The FEMA-run sites will be entirely new in most cases, according to a senior White House official, but the federal agency will work with governors to provide personnel and support to existing state-run vaccination centers where they’re needed,” CBS News reported. “The agency will offer funding, logistics, staffing and mobile vaccination clinics, but governors are free [to] turn down DOD deployments to their state.”
There will be enough of the vaccine for the public by the summer, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “By the summer, we will have enough supply for the public. But that doesn’t ensure that everybody will have had a vaccine,” Psaki said. “We need to ensure we have the materials to distribute the vaccine, the vaccinators and qualified individuals to literally put the shots in the arms of Americans, and the places to do it.”
