The United States is diligently working to vaccinate its population. Included in The Biden Administration’s plans, is to expand community health centers to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines. In the Administration’s first the month, Biden said it has plans to “’deploy mobile clinics, moving from community to community, that will partner with community health centers and local primary care doctors to offer vaccines to the hard-hit and hard-to-reach communities.’” Other key highlights of the plan include:
- Launching a new program with community health centers so they can directly access vaccines where they are needed. The Administration will also encourage jurisdictions to engage and work closely with health centers in community vaccination planning.
- Ensuring that health centers have the resources they need to successfully launch vaccination programs.
- Calling on Congress for additional funds to support health centers and The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to start new programs to provide guidance and technical assistance to providers nationwide.
- Mobilize a public health jobs program to support the COVID-19 response and funding 100,000 public health workers to nearly triple the public health workforce for community health tasks such as vaccine outreach and contact tracing. These individuals would eventually transition into community health roles to build long-term public health capacity and improve quality of care and reduce hospitalizations for underserved and low-income communities.
“In response to the global demand, Pfizer and BioNTech SE have plans to increase production of its vaccines by 50 percent. The United States has locked in 200 million doses” of the vaccine. “Pfizer has agreed to deliver 300 million doses [of the vaccine] to the United States by the end of July. Moderna has also agreed to supply 300 million doses to the United States by the end of July.” The United States is averaging about 1.7 million COVID-19 shots per day.
Moderna was asked if it’s possible to get additional vaccines out of a single vial with the intention of vaccinating more people. Moderna has cautioned against it because there isn’t data showing whether or not the vaccine is or is as effective as having the full dose of the vaccine.
