Biden Outlines Vaccine Plan, Focuses on Leadership, Speed, and Equity

In response to President-elect Joe Biden announcing additional information on his plan to fix the Trump Administration’s vaccine distribution disaster, Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room Director Zac Petkanas released the following statement: 

“Today, President-elect Biden showed us what a comprehensive, successful, and equitable vaccine distribution process will look like under his Administration.

“We’ve now had access to life-saving vaccines for over a month, but distribution is a catastrophe because of the Trump Administration’s string of failures. Foregoing their responsibility to lead, the Trump Administration has left the entire burden of getting hundreds of millions of Americans vaccinated to already-strained states and local communities. Without federal support or oversight, the process has completely broken down.

“The plan President-elect Biden outlined today picks up the mantle of federal leadership and begins to rectify the mess left behind by the outgoing Trump Administration. Offering funding and logistic support, determination to fortify supplies, launching community vaccination centers, hiring 100,000 public health workers, and investing in direct outreach to communities of color, this plan provides the type of equitable, comprehensive solutions we’ve been missing throughout this pandemic. 

“Fixing the vaccine problem and getting this virus under control will continue to be a long, difficult challenge. But the plan President-elect Biden outlined today is a strong step in the right direction.”

President-elect Biden Is Calling for Robust Federal Support to Scale Up Vaccine Distribution

• President-Elect Biden Is Calling For Roughly $400 Billion To Bolster The Federal Government’s Role In The Coronavirus Crisis. “President-elect Joe Biden called on Congress Thursday night to pour another roughly $400 billion into fighting the coronavirus pandemic to create a national vaccination program, expand testing and hire 100,000 more community health workers. Part of a broad relief package to lift up the nation’s economy and ease the devastation caused by the pandemic at its worst moment so far, Biden’s request spells out his oft-stated determination for the federal government to assume a far more muscular role in responding to the public health crisis.”  [Washington Post, 1/14/21]
• Included In The $400 Billion Is $20 Billion To Build A National Vaccine Program, Including Launching Federal Vaccination Sites Across The Country. “The American Rescue Plan calls for investing $20 billion in a national vaccination program, including launching community vaccination centers around the country and mobile units in difficult-to-reach areas. It would also increase federal support to vaccinate Medicaid enrollees.” [CNN, 1/15/21]
  

• • Biden Will Deploy Mobile Vaccination Sites And Build Provider Partnerships To Ensure Vaccines Are Administered Underserved Urban And Rural Communities.  “President-elect Biden will deploy mobile vaccination clinics in the most hard-to-reach communities and to support those who face challenges accessing vaccination sites, including individuals who live in underserved urban and rural areas. The federal government will partner with states and local providers, including primary care providers, to ensure that they have the resources needed to help get vaccines to the communities they serve. The federal government will launch targeted programs to engage community health centers, rural health clinics, critical access hospitals, and tribal health services to ensure that we can meet the needs of all communities.”   [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
    

• President-Elect Biden’s Rescue Plan Calls For Funding To Hire 100,000 Public Health Workers To Encourage Vaccinations And Do Contact Tracing. “Biden is seeking money to hire 100,000 public health workers to encourage people to get vaccinated, as well as to do contact tracing to figure out who has been exposed by people who test positive. Over the longer term, he envisions these workers helping to build up the nation’s depleted public health departments. His advisers did not spell out how much money would be needed for this purpose.” [Washington Post, 1/14/21]
  
• Biden’s Vaccine Plan Will Focus On Making The Vaccine More Accessible For Low-Income Communities Of Color. “President-Elect Joe Biden on Friday afternoon will unveil a plan to overhaul the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines with an eye toward making the shots more accessible to low-income communities of color and combating widespread misinformation and public distrust. Two people close to the transition briefed on the plan say the Biden team plans to distribute vaccines to federally qualified health centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods and propose establishing mass vaccination sites in sports stadiums, community centers and churches. That would provide new outlets for communities that lack hospitals and pharmacies.” [Politico, 1/15/21]
  
• The Biden Vaccine Plan Is Expected To Include Funding For An Ad Campaign To Build Faith In The Vaccination Effort. “Biden is also expected to pitch a billion-dollar national ad campaign aimed at convincing the majority of Americans to get vaccinated, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. The campaign would include a range of awareness initiatives in addition to paid media, in a bid to sell the public on the mass inoculation effort.”  [Politico, 1/15/21]
  

• President-Elect Biden’s Plan Calls For More People To Be Vaccinated, Including Those 65 And Older And Essential Workers. The outline of Biden’s plan aims to: “Encourage states to allow more people to be vaccinated including individuals 65 and older as well as frontline workers. ​The process of establishing priority groups was driven by science, but the implementation has been too rigid and confusing.  We now see doses of vaccines sitting in freezers unused while people who want the vaccine cannot get it. President-elect Biden’s plan encourages states to open up eligibility beyond healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents and staff, to include frontline essential workers like teachers, first responders, grocery store employees, and anyone who is 65and older.” [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
  

• Biden Plans To Forge Relationships With State, Local, And Community-Based Organizations To Ensure Equity Throughout The Vaccination Process. “We will ensure that there is equity in the vaccination process by using data to target resources to hard-hit communities, ensuring no out-of-pocket costs for vaccinations, and equitable access to vaccines in marginalized and medically-underserved communities. Partnerships with state, local and community-based organizations and trusted health care providers, like community health centers, will be central to this effort.”  [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
  

• Biden Intends To Reimburse States For The Deployment Of The National Guard To Support Vaccinations, And Supports Additional FEMA Assistance. “Fully reimburse state deployment of the National Guard to support vaccinations and provide additional FEMA assistance. ​Many states are planning to use their National Guard to support vaccine distribution efforts, including to support critical transportation and logistics functions. To further support states, President-elect Biden’s plan fully reimburses states for the use of the National Guard and provides 100% cost match for state and local emergency costs through FEMA.” [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
  

• Biden Will Expand Access To Vaccines In Pharmacies. “Make vaccines available in pharmacies. ​Millions of Americans turn to their local pharmacies every day for their medicines, flu shots, and much more. Nearly 90 percent of Americans live within five miles of a pharmacy. President-elect Biden will quickly jumpstart efforts to increase capacity at chain and independent pharmacies across the country to get Americans vaccinated.”  [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
• Biden Plans To Launch A New Partnership With Federally Qualified Health Centers To Ensure That They Can Directly Access Vaccine Supplies. “Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serve more than 30 million patients each year—one in 11 people nationwide. Many are people of color and many live in rural communities. FQHC patients are often individuals struggling to make ends meet. Given the critical role that these providers play in their communities, President-elect Biden will launch a new program to ensure that FQHCs can directly access vaccine supply where needed. At the same time, the Administration will encourage jurisdictions to engage and work closely with health centers in their community vaccination planning.”   [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
  

• Biden Will Maximize The Manufacturing Of Vaccine And Vaccine Supplies,  Including Using The Defense Production Act. “To help people get  vaccinated more quickly, the president-elect will maximize the manufacture of vaccine and vaccine supplies for the country, including using the Defense Production Act. This effort will prioritize supplies that could cause bottlenecks, including glass vials, stoppers, syringes, needles, and the ‘fill and finish’ capacity to package vaccine into vials.” [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]
  
• Biden Plans To Communicate Effectively With States, Providing Regular Projections Of The Allocations States And Localities Will Receive, And To Fortify The Logistics Chain.  “To effectively plan and scale distribution, states and localities rely on both advanced understanding of their allocations and timely delivery of their ordered doses. Under President-elect Biden’s plan, the federal government will provide regular projections of the allocations states and localities will receive. The federal government will build on the operational plans in place to ensure the effective distribution, storage, and transit of vaccines to states, including support for maintaining or augmenting the vaccine-specific required cold chain. The federal government will also fully leverage the Defense Production Act to fill any distribution gaps, including with respect to any needed refrigeration, transportation, or storage facilities.” [Biden COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, 1/15/21]

Donald Trump’s Abdication of Responsibility for Vaccine Distribution Created Chaos for States and Localities

• When The First Doses Of The Vaccine Were Being Distributed, States Had Only Been Allocated $340 Million In Funding To Ramp Up Distribution. “States and local public health officials have warned for months that they would need more than $8 billion in additional funding to stand up the infrastructure needed to administer vaccines. The Trump administration instead provided states $340 million in funding to prepare for vaccinations. Congressional lawmakers also balked for months at appropriating additional funding for vaccine distribution, although the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Trump on Sunday included $8 billion in funding for that effort.” [Stat, 12/29/20]
  
• Stimulus Funding For Vaccine Distribution Is Likely To Arrive Long After Overburdened Health Departments Have Begun Administering Vaccines. “Congress passed a stimulus package on Dec. 27 that will provide $9 billion toward vaccination costs, on top of $340 million that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to the states in September and December. But the new funds will arrive long after local health departments — already overburdened with mass testing and contact tracing efforts — had to begin planning for and administering vaccines.” [New York Times, 1/3/21]
  
• Operation Warp Speed Leaders Waited Months To Approve A Vaccine Distribution Plan Proposed By US Health Officials, Leaving States Little Time To Prepare. “Operation Warp Speed leaders waited more than two months to approve a plan to distribute and administer Covid-19 vaccines proposed by U.S. health officials, administration officials said, leaving states with little time to implement a mass-vaccination campaign amid a coronavirus surge. State and local officials had been clamoring for months for help preparing for the largest vaccination program in U.S. history when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a playbook in September to guide them. The CDC had wanted to start helping states plan in June how to get people vaccinated. But officials at Operation Warp Speed rebuffed the agency’s plan for distributing vaccines. They adopted a similar plan in August only after exploring other options—and then held the release of the CDC’s playbook for states for two weeks for additional clearance and to put it out with another document, the officials said.” [Wall Street Journal, 1/15/21]
  
• The Trump Administration Declined Between 100 Million And 500 Million Additional Doses Of The Pfizer Vaccine, Allowing Them To Be Shipped Overseas. “The government was in July given the option to request 100 million to 500 million additional doses. But despite repeated warnings from Pfizer officials that demand could vastly outstrip supply and amid urges to pre-order more doses, the Trump administration turned down the offer, according to several people familiar with the discussions.” [New York Times, 12/7/20]
  
• The Federal Government Initially Cut Shipments Of The Vaccine To Some States By As Much As 40 Percent, Complicating Distribution Plans. “Several U.S. states including New Jersey, California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington state said the federal government has cut their expected allotments of the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine for next week by about 40% without explanation. The Health and Human Services Department disputed that cuts had been made…. The conflict added to uncertainty for states and hospital systems administering the first doses and planning for more in the weeks ahead. New Jersey, for instance, expects 53,625 doses of the Pfizer shot next week, about 38% less than it had planned for, Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said.” [Bloomberg, 12/18/20]
  
• Even As The Federal Government Slashed Shipments To States, Pfizer Said Unused Doses Of Vaccine Were Sitting In Warehouses. “Pfizer said Thursday that millions of COVID-19 vaccines were sitting in storage because the US government hadn’t given it directions on where to send them yet. The statement was released a day after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar suggested at a press conference that the drug company was having ‘manufacturing challenges,’ The Hill reported… Pfizer said in the Thursday statement that the company was ‘not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine’ and that ‘no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed.’ ‘This week we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the US Government to the locations specified by them,’ the statement added. ‘We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse, but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.’” [Business Insider, 12/18/20]
  
• After President Trump Spent Months Downplaying The Science And Attacking The Experts, Americans Are Hesitant To Get The Vaccine. “One reason for the partisan divide over vaccination, experts said, is the president himself. His repeated denigration of scientists and insistence that the pandemic is not a threat, they said, have contributed to a sense among his followers that the vaccine is either not safe or not worth taking.” [New York Times, 12/18/20]
  

• • Nearly 40 Percent Of Americans Say They Will Definitely Or Probably Not Get The Vaccine When It Is Available To Them. According to a December survey undertaken by the Pew Research Center, nearly 40% of Americans say they will definitely not or probably not get the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them. Gallup polls put the number at 37%.” [Time, 1/5/21]
    

• Hospitals And Staff Are Struggling To Vaccinate Essential Workers As They Care For Patients Under The Strain Of A Winter Surge In Cases. “Hospitals, which are vaccinating the bulk of front-line health care workers, are under tremendous strain as the winter surge of COVID-19 cases engulfs them. ‘We’re launching a vaccine campaign in the midst of a pandemic surge after a year that’s drained and strained health care providers and public health departments. And we’re launching a vaccine campaign during the winter holidays,’ [National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases’ Nancy] Messonnier said.” [USA Today, 1/4/21]
  
• The Federal Government’s Abdication Of Responsibility For Vaccine Distribution Has Pushed The Responsibility To Underdeveloped Local Health Departments, Which Rely On Hospitals. The lack of a clear federal approach has also meant that the actual delivery of vaccinations has cascaded down to public health departments without adequate preparedness or vitally required support. Public health agencies at the state and local levels are chronically underdeveloped and underfunded. In some counties, there is not even a local public health department, leaving much of this work to fall to the state… This has led to a default reliance on hospitals to distribute vaccines, particularly with the nature of vaccine storage requirements. But hospitals lack the intrinsic structure and operational capacity to act as public health agents; they are simply not set up for this function. Vaccines are also being slowly distributed to retail pharmacies, which can open up new points of access, but coordination is in many ways even more complicated in these settings.” [MSNBC, 1/4/21]
  
• Due To A Lack Of A Centralized Distribution Strategy, Information On The Vaccine Varies So Widely From County To County That Systems Are Becoming Easily Overwhelmed. “After months of anticipation, millions of doses of the two authorized coronavirus vaccines — made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — are flowing into hospitals and health departments across the nation, putting the end of the pandemic in sight. But Americans trying to access shots are encountering systems that vary widely county to county and that, in many places, are overwhelmed. Some counties and hospital systems launched reservation websites, only for them to quickly become booked or crash. Others announced appointments only through Facebook, with slots filling before some residents knew to look. And many have not revealed how the vaccine will be made available to anyone beyond health-care workers and long-term care residents and employees, the focus of the first round of vaccinations.” [Washington Post, 1/3/21]
  
• The Federal Government Hasn’t Set Up An Emergency Communications System To Convey Localized Information About Vaccine Availability. “Local governments, already stretched by the crisis and reeling from Congress’s delays passing the latest COVID-19 relief bill, often lack the resources necessary to manage vaccine communication and coordination… Historically, the federal government has established systems to help local governments deploy emergency information, like tornado and hurricane warnings that are broadcast on local television, as well as localized text alerts.But the government hasn’t set up emergency communication systems to convey localized information about the vaccine, forcing citizens to turn to less reliable sources of information online.” [Axios, 1/5/21]
  
• In Some Places, Up To 70 Percent Of Vaccine Doses Are Sitting On Pharmacy Shelves. “Doses have been distributed behind the government’s initial schedule, with 15 million, instead of the promised 20 million doses delivered by the end of 2020. And about 70% of those doses are sitting on pharmacy shelves, according to government data, with only about 14% of doses destined for nursing home residents and caregivers injected so far… Federal officials have focused on getting the vaccine onto hospital shelves but to get them off the shelves requires ‘an enormous human element,’ said  [Kelly Moore, Deputy Director of the Immunization Action Coalition].”  [USA Today, 1/5/21]
  
• There Were No Explicit Directions Included With Vaccine Shipments. “Dr. [Karen] Kinsell and [Dr. Steven] Miracle said that when the [vaccine] shipments first arrived, there were no explicit directions included with them. ‘There was no clear instruction,’ Miracle said. ‘The expectation was to follow the [Georgia] Department of Public Health guidelines.’ The guidelines to enroll as a vaccine provider direct medical personnel to follow that state framework, Public Health said.” [Georgia Health News, 12/31/20]
  

• The Trump Administration This Week Announced Abrupt Changes To The Way They Will Distribute The Vaccine, Including “Punishing” States That Provide Shots Slower Than Others. “Trump administration health officials blindsided states on Tuesday with an abrupt and dramatic shift in how they’ll distribute coronavirus vaccines that may set up new hurdles for the Biden transition team. The administration plans to punish states that don’t move fast enough on vaccinations or that fail to provide the government real-time reports on inoculations. Trump officials also urged states to immediately start vaccinating anyone 65 and over or with high-risk medical conditions.” [Politico, 1/12/21]
  
• The Trump Administration Promised States It Would Release Held-Back Doses Of The Vaccine… But Those Supplies Were Already Exhausted. “When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed… The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line. Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding eligibility for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions.” [Washington Post, 1/15/21]