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 The Biden administration on Thursday revealed a nearly $2 trillion
proposal to address the economic harm from the COVID-19 pandemic
that included $20 billion for vaccine distribution and $50 billion
for testing. It builds on the $1.4 trillion COVID relief bill passed
in December, more than tripling the funding allocated to state and
local governments for vaccine distribution.
"The vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure
thus far," Biden said in a prime-time address. "This will be one of
the most challenging operational efforts we've ever undertaken as a
nation. We'll have to move heaven and earth to get more people
vaccinated."
More than a month into the United States' vaccination campaign,
around 11 million Americans have been vaccinated – far short of the
Trump administration's initial goal of 20 million people by the end
of 2020. Federal officials largely left states to manage
distribution, resulting in wide variations in vaccination rates even
as daily deaths hit new records.
Experts said that rapidly setting up vaccination centers and getting
more shots to communities will be crucial if Biden is to reach his
target of 100 million shots in the first 100 days, a promise he
repeated on Thursday.
More infectious variants of the coronavirus have been found in the
United States, adding to the need for rapid distribution.
"We're at the peak of the surge of the epidemic and we're in a race
against time against these new variants. I think the game's changed
in terms of what the strategy needs to be," Scott Gottlieb, former
head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Pfizer Inc board
member, said in an interview. Pfizer and BioNTech SE and Moderna
make the two vaccines being distributed in the United States.
Gottlieb said that pushing doses to multiple channels around the
country, such as pharmacies and mass vaccination sites, would make
it easier to reach a wider group of Americans and that it would be a
mistake to rely on only one method of distribution.
"The mistake we made was we relied on a single approach to how we
were distributing" vaccines, he said. "We need to look at a lot of
different approaches because certain people are going to be willing
to go online, register, go to a big stadium, stand in line, and get
a vaccine and certain patients won't."
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 This week, the Trump
administration said they would release millions
of doses they had held back for second shots, a
move Biden previously indicated he also favored.
It encouraged states to expand access to people
65 and older or with certain medical conditions.
Mass vaccination centers will hasten the rollout
because residents will have a single,
widely-known location, experts said.
They also tend to be closely connected to local governments and
nonprofits, which can be an asset when contending with local
factors, including hesitancy to take the vaccine or lack of health
insurance.
"We have to move vaccination into the community and nearer to
patients with mass vaccination sites and community vaccination units
which will allow people to more easily access the vaccine," said
Ames Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health
Security.
Local public health officials told Reuters that mass vaccination
centers have been effective once up and running, but they have been
difficult and expensive to set up and staff.
Alan Harris, an emergency manager for Florida's Seminole county,
said local centers including a mobile clinic have already vaccinated
about 10% of the county's residents over 65.
Trump's top health official Alex Azar said earlier this week that
the administration will encourage states to set up more clinics but
did not comment on funding. The administration says it expects to
reach 1 million shots per day by the end of next week.
(Reporting by Carl O'Donnell and Rebecca Spalding; Additional
reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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