(Adds comment from White House chief of staff)
By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is considering a request by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide assistance in administering COVID-19 vaccines, a spokesman said on Thursday.
On Monday, President Joe Biden said he believed it was possible to have 150 million doses of the vaccine administered in his first 100 days in office.
“Given the importance of the request, it will be reviewed urgently, but carefully to determine which DoD assets can be safely made available to support the effort,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
At a briefing on Thursday, Kirby said he would not be surprised if military assistance included a mix of active duty, National Guard and reserve military personnel.
The Pentagon did not say how many soldiers could be involved.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain told CBS Evening News that FEMA was working with the Pentagon to use 10,000 soldiers and open 100 centers across the country to increase vaccine availability.
The pandemic, which killed more than 420,000 Americans, is currently infecting more than 173,000 people daily and has left millions without work.
Using the military to fight the coronavirus is not new. At its peak under former President Donald Trump, more than 47,000 National Guard soldiers were supporting COVID-19 operations and some 20,000 continue to help.
The Army Corps of Engineers has also built thousands of rooms across the country to help hospitals with the strain caused by the spread of the coronavirus. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart, edited by Dan Grebler and Peter Cooney)
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