Biden Harnesses Defense Production Act for Vaccine Rollout

As frustrations grow among Americans eager to receive Covid-19 vaccinations but with limited - or currently non-existent - options to get appointments President Biden is looking to harness the powers of the Defense Production Act (something Der Trumpenfuhrer never did sufficiently) to speed up delivery of the vaccine.  Some of the problems with the vaccination rate is lack of vaccine doses - a week ago the Governor of Virginia stated to me Virginia was only receiving a third of the quantity it needed - and some hospital systems and pharmacy chains that have been sitting on supplies or providing vaccines to those not in the top priority groups.  Locally, if one's primary care provider is not in a Riverside or Sentara controlled practice group, one is pretty much out of luck. Next week, CVS pharmacies are supposed to begin setting appointments but Walgreens - another chain with a federal contract - has no near term plans to offer vaccinations in Virginia. One can only hope that Biden is able to bring better order and speed to the vaccine rollout process.  Sadly, the last months of the Trump/Pence regime saw little focus on a plan to deliver the vaccine to the American public as Trump was obsessed with promoting the lie that he had won the 2020 election.   A piece in the Washington Post looks at Biden's effort.  Here are excerpts:

The Biden administration announced a handful of initiatives Friday aimed at accelerating mass inoculations against the coronavirus and expanding production of rapid tests and surgical gloves to help control the pathogen.

In the most immediate action, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved a request from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deploy 1,110 troops to support vaccination sites. The first active-duty military personnel will arrive in California within the next 10 days, to begin operations around Feb. 15, said Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House’s coronavirus response team. The service members, the majority of whom will be medical personnel, are expected to be stationed at five FEMA megasites, two of which are in Oakland and east Los Angeles.

Biden has vowed to stand up 100 new sites in 30 days as he seeks to surpass his target of administering 100 million shots in his first 100 days — a rate that modeling suggests will be insufficient to stay ahead of new variants of the virus.

As of Thursday, there were 175 federally supported vaccination sites throughout the country, according to a FEMA leadership brief obtained by The Washington Post. Federal support includes the National Guard, whose services some states enlisted from the outset of the immunization campaign late last year.

In a bid to boost supplies of the shots and of other critical equipment, the Biden administration also said Friday that it was taking several steps under the Defense Production Act. The Korean War-era law has been a backbone of Biden’s pandemic-related promises. But its power and its limits are poorly understood, according to experts in government contracting.

The law includes a range of emergency powers to control distribution of products and compel companies to prioritize certain orders over others. Most important for the Biden administration’s long-term strategy is the authority it provides to issue loans and purchase agreements to expand industrial capacity.

In the short term, the Biden administration said it was using the law to ensure Pfizer has access to needed equipment to scale up production of the vaccine it developed with German company BioNTech. Between that product and the one developed by Moderna, the federal government has contracts in place for 400 million vaccine doses in the first half of the year — enough for 200 million people under the two-dose protocols.

The Biden administration is seeking 100 million more doses from each company, with the aim of securing the additional doses through the summer. While the administration has expressed confidence it will receive the supply, people knowledgeable about the negotiations said the need for certain equipment is vital.

Tim Manning, supply coordinator for the White House’s coronavirus response, said the action taken by the Trump administration was limited. The new administration will expand the priority ratings to include more equipment, he said, identifying filling pumps and filtration units as examples.

Pfizer spokeswoman Amy Rose did not comment on the announcement but said, “Our teams continue to work closely on our production as our commercial ramp-up progresses.” The company, as part of material released ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings call this week, indicated it could deliver 200 million vaccine doses to the United States by May, two months earlier than its initial July target. Its global estimate is 2 billion doses by year’s end.

Manning, however, said the Biden administration was taking steps to use the law to expand domestic production of critical equipment for the pandemic response, though he declined to name specific companies involved. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment about the cost of the efforts.

He said the administration was using powers under the Defense Production Act to boost domestic manufacturing of at-home coronavirus tests. With the investments, Manning said, 61 million such tests would be available by the summer.

Earlier this week, the administration announced that it was buying 8.5 million of the rapid tests from the Australian company Ellume. It will also invest in six more suppliers to “rapidly surge domestic testing capability,” Manning said. The investments will help private-sector partners construct new plants and build new production lines, with the aim of building resilience against disruptions to the supply chain, he said.

The actions also extend to the supply of personal protective equipment. Manning said the federal government would use the Defense Production Act to spur domestic manufacturing of surgical gloves, for which the country is currently almost entirely dependent on overseas suppliers.

“That’s unacceptable, and we’re using all of our authorities to fix it,” he said.

Manning said the government would help build plants to make the raw materials needed for the gloves, as well as factories that would produce the gloves themselves. By year’s end, he said, the country would be able to produce more than 1 billion surgical gloves a month — enough to satisfy about half of all American health-care demands.