The case increases are concentrated in communities with low vaccination rates.ĬHANG: That's White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients. JEFF ZIENTS: The threat is now predominantly only to the unvaccinated. And they are all behind the national average in vaccination rates. We learned from a White House briefing today that just three states account for 40% of cases nationwide. But these cases aren't rising equally across the country. In the U.S., COVID-19 cases are rising again, driven by the highly transmissible delta variant. James Doubek produced for the Web.We had hoped we wouldn't have to say this, but the last month has made the trend clear. ![]() And when we talk to, you know, behavioral economist people who study this stuff, they say exactly what the congressman says: that if you eliminate friction, if you make it easier for people, you'll increase that vaccination rate.Īndrea Hsu and Courtney Dorning produced the audio interview. We shouldn't make people who, like this, have to chase vaccines. They can go to workplaces, they can go to churches, they can go to communities. I'll tell you what we are considering, which is mobile vaccination centers that can move from place to place. Is that something that you're considering, vaccination sites at workplaces? He's calling for vaccination sites to be set up at, say, meatpacking plants. The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Raul Ruiz, is sounding the alarm about low vaccination rates in Latino communities. And then at the end of February, beginning of March, we'll hope to hear what the FDA has to say about a third vaccine, which is a very promising vaccine from Johnson and Johnson. We've been using the Defense Production Act as we talked about last week.Īnd these are all small steps. And each week so far, we've been able to announce additional volume. I think people know that there's two manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, to increase their supply and increase it every week. 1, we are working with the two manufacturers. And people who perhaps don't have as much technology or maybe aren't as fluent with technology and don't have all of those kinds of resources or time are getting locked out.Ĭan the White House do anything about that? One of the things that's happening, and it's a little bit concerning and it should be concerning to all of us, is that people who are more tech savvy and more time on their hands, maybe they have more kids or grandkids, they're the ones that are locking up a lot of these appointments. I'm just thinking of how time consuming it is and how frustrating it is. We're hearing reporting saying that in Tennessee, the advice is register in every single county. How do we help people find the answer to that? And so we're working on that. We're looking at various options to make it easier for someone who wants to know: hey, if there's a vaccine near me, maybe it's not at my nearest pharmacy, maybe it's at a pharmacy that's two pharmacies away, or maybe it's at a hospital or a clinic. Today, many of the pharmacies have their own websites. Look, if we were designing a system with a clean sheet of paper, we might have done it differently. But in the meantime, they should know that 40 million plus shots have gone out.Īre you working toward any kind of more unified system where we're not all trying to register at every pharmacy and the hospital and the local health authority and everywhere else? And, you know, I think people are going to have to probably continue to be more patient and they want to be. We are, as you said, starting to move directly into what we're calling a federal retail pharmacy program so that there will be more places for the vaccine to be available. We're opening 100 community vaccination centers, including two that are open already. We've increased production that we've delivered to states by over 20%. ![]() But the good news is we are increasing production every week. We're in a situation, and we will be for a little while, of undersupply. What is the plan to keep this rollout to pharmacies from making an already chaotic process more chaotic? But it's got a lot of people already wondering how they're going to access those doses because getting appointments has been such a scramble for so many people. This is the week that some 6,500 pharmacies across the country are going to get doses of the vaccine, which is great. On All Things Considered, Slavitt said the government is working to make getting appointments easier and is considering mobile vaccination centers.
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