President Joe Biden’s administration will boost weekly vaccine shipments to states to 11 million from 10.5 million and launch a vaccination program through community health centers in every state and territory, White House adviser Jeff Zients said Tuesday.
The administration will begin shipping doses to the centers as soon as next week. That will include a total of one million doses -- enough for 500,000 full vaccinations -- as the program ramps up in coming weeks, Zients said at a briefing. The timeline for those shipments wasn’t immediately clear.
The community centers are a crucial way to get doses to hard-to-reach communities. “Equity is our north star here,” said Marcella Nunez-Smith, who serves as chair of Biden’s COVID-19 health equity task force. “This effort that focuses on direct allocation to community health centers really is about connecting with those hard-to-reach populations across the country.”
The program will begin with 250 health centers, Nunez-Smith said. As vaccines become more available, shipments will go to all 1,400 centers nationwide, she said.
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