The White House reported that to speed up their vaccination campaign, they would open more "community vaccination centers," using colleges, universities, and stadiums in many hard-hit states.
As the U.S. government aims to significantly expand its efforts to vaccinate the nation's population against the COVID-19-causing virus, it has planned to extend its vaccination campaign by building more centers and facilities.
To help improve vaccine development, President Joe Biden has also invoked the Defense Production Act. The government also plans to create 100 countrywide vaccination sites and send mobile units to rural and underserved communities.
"These centres are helping to provide new, more efficient places for people to get vaccinated," Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 coordinator, said while having a virtual news conference.
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The sites of the centers will be located at the Oakland Coliseum and in areas of East Oakland and East Los Angeles at the California State University, including Los Angeles, Zients' addresses. While the officials from the Department of Defense, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services will mainly staff and operate the facilities.
Zients called those locations "just the beginning" of the Biden administration's drive to speed up the pace of vaccinations, especially in areas with the brunt of diseases and death.
He said the Biden administration would keep track to achieve the target of administering 100 million shots in 100 days, adding that 1.3 million doses went into people's arms from January 27 to February 2 based on the seven-day average daily dose administration.
The additional 100 million doses would increase the total amount of government-purchased doses from 400 million to 600 million. Two doses of the vaccine will be needed for each human to be effectively vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Director Rachel Walensky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that new cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations seem to be on a downward course but cautioned that this positive momentum could be disrupted by new variants of the virus emerging across the nation.
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Vaccination campaign and pharmaceutical efforts
Although the U.S. currently approved only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, praised international efforts to develop vaccine candidates such as Russia's Sputnik V and China's Sinovac.
He also reminded the state that the Biden administration reversed Donald Trump's effort in an attempt to withdraw from the World Health Organization, where the U.S. is the largest donor. The change was seen as a wider U.S. withdrawal from multilateral organizations.
"We in the United States ... are back on the global scene," he said while adding that the United States will also join the COVAX vaccine project that aims to deliver coronavirus vaccines to developing countries.
Fauci also said that while waiting for the vaccination campaign, Americans should continue to follow recommendations for social distancing and protocols and added that if people want to "double mask" for added security, there is no harm.
