As the United States enters the second month of the largest vaccination campaign in the nations history, states are looking for ways to expand their inoculation efforts as they race against a surging nationwide outbreak.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration made a few big changes to it vaccine distribution strategy in order to rollout the vaccines more quickly.
First, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (H.H.S.) called for all states to expand their vaccine eligibility pools to include those 65 and older, as well as all citizens with preexisting conditions that are likely to lead to severe or fatal COVID infection, like diabetes. These groups of people were considered to be third priority to second priority frontline essential works and people age 75 years and older and first priority health care and long-term care facility residents.
H.H.S. Secretary Alex Azar now recommends that states immediately start vaccinating groups lower on the priority scale.
"States should not be waiting to complete [first] prioritization before proceeding to broad categories of eligibility," Azar stated during a Tuesday press briefing outlining the new guidance. "Think of it like boarding an airplane. You might have a sequential order in which you board people, but you don't wait until literally every person from a group is boarded before moving on to the next."
Additionally, the Trump administration will no longer reserve millions of doses of vaccines developed by Pfizer
The administration also urged states to expand their vaccination campaigns to more venues, such as sports stadiums, convention centers, pharmacies and community health centers in order to increase daily inoculations.
As of Wednesday, the United States has distributed over 29 million doses and have administered 10 million first doses of either two dose vaccine, according to data tallied by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; currently a little over 3% of the nation's population is partially vaccinated.
In major outbreak hotspots like California, drive-thru vaccination centers are planned for both the San Diego Padres' and Los Angeles Dodgers' baseball stadiums, helping to curb the state's surging outbreak and overwhelming hospitalization rate. Orange County's Disneyland
According to the Associated Press, only about 1.5% of California's population have been vaccinated as of Tuesday. At the same time, the state surpassed a death toll of 30,000.
