As of this morning, over 98 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in the United States and the country should cross the 100 million mark later today if the current pace of approximately 2.23 million doses per day continues. This milestone comes as the Biden Administration continues to make dramatic strides in the effort to vaccinate the American people and defeat the coronavirus.
Last night, President Biden offered hope to the American people when he announced his plans for every adult to be eligible for the vaccine by May 1st, and for July 4th to be a day where the American people can begin to return to normalcy and gather in small groups to celebrate our Independence Day.
President Biden signed his landmark relief legislation, the American Rescue Plan, into law yesterday. This landmark legislation provides direct relief to the American people while ensuring the government has the funding needed to vaccinate the American people and defeat the coronavirus.
**New Initiatives**
- President Biden announced a plan to create a website where the American people can easily search for available vaccines close by in an effort to streamline vaccinations.
- President Biden announced an effort to make vaccines available at more pharmacies, create double the number of mass vaccination sites, and certify dentists, paramedics, veterinarians, and physician assistants to deliver the vaccine into peoples’ arms.
- President Biden announced his plan to deploy 4,000 more U.S. troops to support coronavirus vaccination efforts.
The American Rescue Plan:
- President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan yesterday. The ARP is a wildly popular relief plan that will provide critical public health funding to fight the virus along with financial support for the American people. The measures in the bill include:
- Boosting direct stimulus payments to $2,000; extending the $300 weekly federal unemployment benefit until September 6th and providing a tax break on $10,000 in unemployment benefits; providing paid leave to American families;
- $137 billion for investing in vaccines and their distribution, establishing community vaccination clinics, investing in testing and sequencing, expanding the public health workforce, investing in the Disaster Relief Fund and shoring up domestic supplies;
- Providing $30 billion in housing assistance including rental assistance for struggling families and helps individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless; extending a federal moratorium on evictions;
- Allocating $170 billion to K-12 schools and institutions of higher education to facilitate the safe reopening of schools and avoid lay-offs;
- Providing $40 billion to child care providers;
- $105 billion to expand health care access including increasing and expanding ACA subsidies and subsidizing COBRA coverage through September;
- $143 billion in progressive tax breaks including increasing the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit;
- Providing $350 billion in funding for states and local governments to prevent layoffs of essential workers on the front lines;
- $25 billion to provide grants to restaurants and bars that lost revenue due to the coronavirus;
On a National Vaccine Strategy:
- President Biden announced a plan to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine which will provide the US with more than enough doses to vaccinate the entire US population.
- The Biden Administration negotiated a crucial agreement between the two pharmaceutical rivals Merck and Johnson & Johnson that allows the single-dose vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson to be jointly produced by Merck, getting this much-needed vaccine to the American people as quickly as possible.
- President Biden announced he was using the “full authority of the federal government” to make sure that every educator, school staff member, and child care worker receives at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by March 31st. The Biden Administration is also seriously considering appointing a “czar” to oversee the effort to reopen schools.
- The FDA granted the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine emergency authorization.
- President Biden secured 200 million more doses of vaccine, increasing the supply by 50 percent.
- President Biden deployed over 1,000 active duty troops to aid state vaccination efforts.
- The Administration launched a plan to deliver a million vaccines a week to pharmacies that are in close proximity to the minority communities that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, to address sharp racial disparities.
- President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to ensure that Pfizer has access to equipment and supplies to produce more vaccine doses, and to ramp up supplies of surgical gloves and at-home coronavirus test kits.
- The Biden Team secured the correct equipment to extract an extra dose of vaccine from every Pfizer vial.
- FEMA provided more than $1.7 billion in assistance to 27 states to bolster the vaccination process.
- President Biden unveiled a national vaccination strategy that included establishing 100 federally-funded community vaccination centers across the country by the end of February, deploying mobile vaccination clinics for hard-to-reach communities, and building partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Centers.
- President Biden increased weekly vaccine supply shipments to states, Tribes, and territories.
- President Biden launched a federal partnership with national and independent pharmacies to expand access to the vaccine.
On Containing the Pandemic:
- The White House announced a plan to deliver more than 25 million masks to over 1,300 Community Health Centers, food pantries, and soup kitchens across the country over the next couple of months.
- The Biden Administration invested $200 million to ramp up sequencing and analytics capabilities in order to track and identify coronavirus variants — as experts warned that a highly contagious, potentially more lethal strain of the virus could become dominant by the end of March.
- The Biden Administration allocated $650 million to expand testing in schools and underserved congregate settings like homeless shelters, and invested $815 million to increase domestic manufacturing of testing supplies.
- President Biden signed an executive order requiring mask-wearing on federal property.
- President Biden created a COVID-19 Response Coordinator position to spearhead pandemic response and prepare for future pandemics.
- President Biden mandated mask-wearing on public transportation, including in airports, and on planes, trains, and buses.
- President Biden signed an order to accelerate the development of treatments for COVID-19 and to expand access to care, including by supporting research and providing targeted surge assistance to critical care and long-term care facilities.
- President Biden signed an order to ensure a “data-driven” response to COVID-19, that calls on leaders of federal agencies to facilitate data sharing, directs the CDC to create a dashboard with county-level data, and calls to advance data and analytics in public health systems.
- President Biden signed a memorandum directing the Secretary of Defense to support governors in the deployment of the National Guard to combat the pandemic, and to make costs fully reimbursable by FEMA.
- President Biden signed an order to secure supplies for pandemic response, including by invoking the Defense Production Act. The order also called on the Secretaries of State, Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and various executive agencies to assess inventories of supplies.
- President Biden established a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force to mitigate the health disparities revealed and exacerbated by the pandemic.
- President Biden signed an order encouraging the Department of Education to develop guidance for schools about whether and how to reopen safely.
- President Biden directed the Department of Labor to issue revised guidance to employers on workplace safety during the pandemic, and to review OSHA enforcement efforts.
- President Biden established a pandemic testing board, to promote diagnostics, identify barriers to testing access, and propose reforms to expand testing.
- President Biden restricted entry into the United States by “noncitizens” who are travelling from parts of Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, and South Africa — places where there is high transmission of COVID-19 and variant strains that are more contagious.
- The Biden Administration pledged to let scientists lead the response, and reintroduced regular briefings on the pandemic to rebuild the trust of the American people.
On Alleviating the Economic Suffering of the American People:
- President Biden signed an executive order designed to shore up America’s supply chains following shortages of critical imported goods including masks and electronic components following the outbreak of the coronavirus.
- The Biden Administration announced new changes to the Paycheck Protection Program intended to make it easier for small businesses, sole proprietors, independent contractors, and self-employed Americans to get loans along with other reforms designed to make the program’s distribution more equitable.
- President Biden extended a federal moratorium on home foreclosures through June 30, and expanded assistance for people behind on their mortgage payments.
- President Biden extended the pause on federal student loan payments.
- President Biden directed federal agencies to identify actions that can be taken to address the economic crisis, and specifically consider actions that improve coordination of federally-funded programs, including:
- Directed the Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase SNAP benefits, and to increase benefits from a school meals program by 15 percent;
- Asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to pause federal collection on veterans’ overpayments and debts;
- Guaranteed unemployment insurance for workers who refuse to work due to safety concerns;
- Expanded the delivery of direct stimulus payments, to make sure that as many as eight million eligible households receive the relief that they missed out on in March and December;
- Established “Benefit Delivery Teams” to ensure that workers and businesses can access government support;
- Directed the Department of Labor to develop recommendations to ensure that all workers across the federal government earn a $15/hour minimum wage.
- Directed the Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase SNAP benefits, and to increase benefits from a school meals program by 15 percent;
- President Biden directed agencies to examine policies that undermined the Affordable Care Act and complicated the process of enrolling in Medicaid, and designated February 15 to May 15 as a “special enrollment period” for Americans to sign up for health care.