The Defense Department will hold a meeting on Friday with more information about the military deployment, said Slavitt. The Biden government has said it will reimburse states for using the National Guard to assist with vaccination efforts, but this will be the first time active duty military personnel have been involved.
The move, which Austin approved on Thursday, will send 1,110 active duty personnel to five FEMA Covid vaccination centers, according to a DoD newsletter. This will include 444 in two Army teams and teams of 222 each from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, according to the DoD.
Each team will have 80 people administering vaccines, 15 registered nurses, 57 clinical staff, 15 people for “command and control” and 55 for “general use”, according to the DoD.
FEMA has asked 10,000 DoD staff to assist in 100 vaccination sites, but that request is still being considered, according to the DoD.
Where staff will depend on FEMA requirements, according to the DoD.
Efforts to vaccinate Americans have been slow to start, but have improved somewhat recently, inoculating between 1.3-1.5 million people a day in the United States. The White House has promised to speed up the process, promising to vaccinate at least 100 million Americans within the Biden’s first 100 days of administration.
With potentially more communicable variants of Covid-19 emerging in the United States, the Biden administration is facing more pressure to accelerate its vaccination efforts. As part of the government’s plan to combat variants, the Food and Drug Administration is planning to launch new standards for vaccine boosters, tests and drugs in the coming weeks, POLITICO said.