Feds sending 1 million COVID vaccine doses to community health centers

A nationwide network of community health centers will receive supplies of the coveted coronavirus vaccine in the latest expansion of the mass inoculation effort, federal officials announced Tuesday.

Some 250 community health centers — including at least one in each state and territory — will receive a cumulative 1 million doses of the vaccine starting next week, with the program eventually ramping up to be available to all of the approximately 1,400 such centers in the US.

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who is spearheading White House efforts to ensure the federal pandemic response is equitable, said the move would particularly help vaccinate “underserved” communities.

“Two-thirds of their [community centers’] patients live at or below the federal poverty line, and 60 percent of patients at community health centers identify as racial or ethnic minorities,” she said. “Equity is our North Star here.”

As data in places including New York City has shown, vaccination efforts thus far have benefited white people more than minorities, relative to racial demographics.

Nunez-Smith said the initial group of community health centers was chosen in large part for their proximity to large, older communities, with senior citizens among those most vulnerable to the deadly virus.

“The federally qualified health centers also in our initial ramp-up really are ones that serve more than 2,000 individuals 65 and older and have large population size,” she said, noting that the centers represented “a mix of urban and rural.”

The doses allocated to the centers are in addition to those sent to pharmacies across the country, and the cumulative 11 million doses now set to be distributed weekly to states, territories and tribes.

The two currently available vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, each require two shots administered a few weeks apart to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, held up the community health center rollout as the latest step in an all-out war that America can’t afford to lose.

“Each day we’re making progress in our effort to put this pandemic behind us,” he said, speaking in the same briefing as Nunez-Smith. “We won’t stop until the job is done.”