Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Governors Complain About Federal Vaccine Coordination
A bipartisan group of governors expressed concern Monday at the Biden administration's vaccine rollout, writing in a letter to the White House that better coordination is needed between the federal government and states on distributing doses to prevent confusion and duplicative efforts. (Liptak and Murray, 2/15)
In other national news 鈥
A U.S. program to vaccinate nursing home residents and staff is moving slowly toward completion in the coming weeks, with the goal of wrapping up the effort by late next month.聽The federally run program contracted with major pharmacy chains around the U.S.聽Launched in December, it was meant to speed vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the U.S. But disruptions over the winter holidays and聽the challenge of going from facility to facility vaccinating older people聽have added at least a month to the timeline.聽(Armstrong, 2/12)
The聽Pentagon has approved 20 more military teams, a combined total of 4,700 service members, to help the聽Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)聽administer COVID-19 vaccines across the country. Following last week鈥檚 approval of five such teams, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized an additional 20 to support FEMA at vaccination mega-sites and smaller locations, top聽Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday. (Mitchell, 2/12)
An executive at Pfizer said he and the company are 鈥渃onfident鈥 in its ability to deliver 2 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine聽by the end of the year聽in an interview with the Associated Press published Sunday. 鈥淩ight now, we can potentially deliver approximately 2 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2021,鈥 Mike McDermott, the president of global supply at Pfizer, told the AP. (Coleman, 2/14)