Biden administration to send 1m Covid vaccine doses to pharmacies next week to scale up distribution

Danielle Zoellner
Updated
(Independent)
(Independent)

The Biden administration has announced it would be sending one million Covid-19 vaccine doses to some pharmacies in the United States starting next week to scale up distribution of the jabs.

These doses would be delivered to 6,500 different pharmacies across the country each week beginning 11 February, said Jeffrey Zients, President Joe Biden’s coronavirus czar, on Tuesday during a White House press briefing.

This would be the first phase in Mr Biden’s federal pharmacy program, which will offer more vaccinations for communities through local pharmacies.

Already the Biden administration was delivering 10.5 million doses each week to states to be distributed among residents. But now the additional one million doses for pharmacies would also be distributed each week.

Mr Zients said the additional one million doses available for the federal government to send out was due to Moderna and Pfizer, the two companies that received emergency use authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their vaccines, ramping up manufacturing.

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