The Pentagon sends over 1,100 soldiers to fuel the COVID-19 vaccine campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Pentagon will send more than 1,100 soldiers to five vaccination centers in what will be the first wave of greater military support for the White House campaign to get more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.

President Joe Biden called for the creation of 100 mass vaccination centers across the country within a month. One of the five new military teams will go to the opening of a vaccination center in California. Other centers are expected to be announced soon.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the Pentagon to provide up to 10,000 military personnel to serve 100 centers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the initial five teams, but the others will be approved in separate installments as FEMA identifies the other locations.

Acting FEMA administrator Robert Fenton told reporters that two vaccination sites that will be “predominantly” administered by the federal government will open in California on February 16, one at California State University in Los Angeles and the other at Oakland.

Military troops will occupy one of California’s two centers, officials from FEMA and the Pentagon said. Personnel from other parts of the federal government will be in the other. More sites will be opened across the country as more doses of the vaccine become available.

The military deployment comes at a time when the country is in a race against a virus that is generating mutations that can make it easier to spread and cause more deadly diseases.

Only about 2 percent of Americans received the required two-dose vaccination regimen that provides optimal protection with the currently available Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. To achieve widespread immunity, or “herd,” the United States must vaccinate 70 to 85 percent of its population, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease specialist.

That would be about 230 million to 280 million people, compared to 6.9 million who are currently fully immunized with two vaccines.

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More help may be on the way soon. Johnson & Johnson announced this week that it is seeking emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its vaccine, which requires only one injection.

Each of the Pentagon’s five military teams includes 222 people, including 80 who will give the vaccines, as well as nurses and other support staff. The teams would be able to deliver about 6,000 rounds a day.

The five teams represent a growing use of active duty military personnel for a vaccination campaign that already involves about 100 National Guard teams in 29 states across the country. National Guard leaders told the Associated Press that they are now considering training additional members of the Guard to apply vaccines so that they can also expand vaccination in more remote and rural parts of their states.

General Dan Hokanson, head of the National Guard Department, said the Guard has the capacity to deploy about 200 additional teams. Training other medical personnel to administer the vaccines, he said, would potentially provide more.

“If we get to the point where we fully implement all of our employees who can (shoot), they are looking at potential training opportunities if we need more than that,” said Hokanson. “We will do everything to make a difference and meet any need.”

The Pentagon said that FEMA teams could be a mix of active duty, National Guard and Reserves. But Hokanson and Major General Jerry Fenwick, director of the Joint Guard Surgeon’s Office, said that at this point, FEMA teams are likely to be largely occupied by active troops. The Guard, they said, is likely to be harnessed by their governors for use in their own states. are more likely to be used in remote rural locations.

Guard leaders said that about 100 mobile vaccination teams already active are delivering more than 50,000 vaccines a day.

“As more vaccines become available, there will certainly be more demand for vaccinators,” said Fenwick.

Pentagon officials have made it clear that they are being careful when using the National Guard and Reserves, because in many cases these military personnel are already working on medical jobs in their civilian lives at local hospitals and medical centers. Hokanson noted that while the Guard could have up to 600 vaccine teams, it had to cut that number in half due to these types of restrictions on civilian work.

He said that so far members of the Guard are operating only in their own states, but can go to neighboring states if necessary in the future, provided they have sufficient staff.

Biden compared the campaign against COVID-19 to a war. Along with deploying troops, he also invoked a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to help reinforce vaccine manufacturing, home COVID-19 test kits and nitrile gloves used by health professionals and vaccinators. Called DPA, the law, in essence, allows the government to assign missions to private companies during national emergencies.

Tim Manning, COVID-19 supply coordinator for the White House, said on Friday that the government was trying to help drugmaker Pfizer eliminate a bottleneck around the fill and finish capabilities with vaccine production, giving the drugmaker the first priority of access to the necessary supplies.

Manning also said that the government is investing in six manufacturers to develop COVID-19 tests at home and at service points, with the goal of producing 60 million tests by the end of the summer. Earlier this week, the White House announced a $ 230 million contract with Ellume, the maker of a home test approved by the Food and Drug Administration. No prescription is required for testing without a prescription.

“The country is right behind where we need to be in testing,” said Manning. For contractual reasons, he said he could not yet reveal the names of the companies.

Another round of contracts will increase the production capacity of surgical gloves in the United States, including the processing of the raw material for gloves. There was a general shortage at the beginning of the pandemic last year.

Manning said the goal is to produce more than 1 billion nitrile gloves domestically by the end of this year.