The US will start sending COVID-19 vaccines directly to community health centers

(Reuters) – The US government will begin delivering COVID-19 vaccines directly to community health centers next week in a bid to speed up vaccinations and ensure doses reach the vulnerable, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

The government will send doses to 250 centers nationwide, selected based on their proximity to vulnerable groups such as the homeless and those with limited English proficiency, they said. Usually, vaccine doses would go to state governments for distribution to health centers.

Eventually, the effort will be extended to more than 1,300 community health centers.

The federal government will initially distribute 1 million doses of vaccine to health centers and increase from there, they added.

The program is part of a broader push by the Biden administration to increase access to COVID-19 photos, with the goal of delivering 100 million doses in the first 100 days of Biden in office. Biden also made it a priority to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly in terms of race, ethnicity and economic status.

The US government is already ahead of schedule to reach its goal of 100 million photos in 100 days, which only required it to modestly exceed the previous administration’s distribution levels. Biden said in January he could target 150 million shots at the time, but his press secretary later said 100 million were still the official target.

This week, the White House began coordinating vaccine shipments directly to 6,500 pharmacies, with the goal of reaching about 40,000.

“We provide tools to communities across the country to do this work and look forward to partnering with them to ensure equity,” Marcella Nunez-Smith, president of COVID-19 of the Biden Administration, Working Group on Health Equity, said in a statement. press call.

The United States has increased the distribution of the vaccine from 8.6 million doses to 11 million doses per week since Biden took office three weeks ago, said Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator.

The White House said it intends to further increase the number of doses it distributes and will use the federal government’s emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to increase vaccine production. Johnson & Johnson is expected to receive authorization for its COVID experimental vaccine immediately after this month, which would further increase the vaccine supply.