The Biden government, aiming to show progress in controlling the spread of COVID-19, monitors the progress of the vaccine implantation based on the number of days since its inauguration, according to a document by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The nine-page senior leadership report obtained by Yahoo News tracks the country’s battle against the pandemic, with an important countdown of days since Biden became president. The document, dated Jan. 29, appears to be a modification of an earlier daily report from senior leadership submitted by FEMA during the Trump administration, which focused primarily on the progress of the disease.
The Biden government seems eager to quantify the progress of the vaccine, especially as some experts have criticized his response to the pandemic, saying that Biden’s original plan to administer 100 million doses of vaccine in 100 days was not ambitious enough, since the US they were already in a similar process before the new president took office. Last week, however, the White House raised the target to 1.5 million a day, and the country is approaching that goal, with 1.35 million doses administered a day last week.
January was the most lethal month of the pandemic in the United States, with more than 90,000 deaths. According to federal monitoring, the seven-day average before January 29 was worse than the previous week, and 19 states remain in the “red zone”, meaning a positivity rate of 10.1 percent or more , according to the FEMA document. There were 125,699 hospitalizations for COVID-19 (below the previous week), and the use of beds in the ICU was just over 70 percent, a slight increase over the previous week.
FEMA, according to the senior leadership report, also established a Civil Rights Advisory Group, with the stated intention of “helping to ensure equity in the allocation of scarce resources, including any future additional vaccine allocations”. Minority communities were disproportionately affected by infections and deaths from COVID-19, and the early distribution of vaccines also noted racial disparities.
The FEMA document also details how emergency aid is being distributed to states, including the use of medical staff and personal protective equipment. He says the agency “has already committed $ 1 billion to states, territories, tribes and Washington, DC, for vaccination sites”, adding that “it expects that number to rise in the next few days”.
The document is in line with comments from the White House COVID task force last week and the plan to maintain a rate of 10 million vaccine allocations per week for four to five weeks. So far, only two states – Alaska and West Virginia – have administered more than 11,000 doses per 100,000 residents, with the vast majority of states administering 6,000 or less. West Virginia, in particular, has been hailed as a success story, in part due to reliance on independent drugstores versus large national chains to administer the vaccine.
The $ 1.9 trillion proposed Biden recovery legislation would provide $ 160 billion for national vaccination and testing efforts and $ 350 billion for state and local governments.
“It’s going to be a logistical challenge that goes beyond everything we’ve tried in this country, but I think we can do that,” said Biden last week. “I am confident that in the summer we will be well on the way to immunity for the herd. I feel good about where we’re going and I think we can do that. “
• Jana Winter contributed reporting for this story.
Read the full document:
Vaccine Tracker from Yahoo News on Scribd
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Originally published