Gee to fight the pandemic Today I'll talk about three specific actions One increasing vaccine supply to providing more places for people to get vaccinated and three supporting state and local partners in their efforts to get needles in arms Let me start with vaccine supply As I know this is top of mind for all of us Last week we took steps to increase the amount of vaccine going to states tribes and territories by 16% Today we are further increasing that weekly allocation by an additional 5% So for the next three weeks we will provide a minimum of 10.5 million in total doses per week across all jurisdictions That means we have increased supply by more than 20% since we took office and we have succeeded in our efforts to secure the equipment required to extract 1/6 dose from Pfizer's vials Vaccine kits shipped to states tribes and territories with Pfizer vials now contain the syringe required to enable a 20% increase in the Pfizer doses To be clear this is on top of the 10.5 million doses we will ship this week I also want to be clear that we're delivering on our commitment to provide states with three weeks forward visibility into supply This is critical and we've heard strong feedback from state and local leaders that this is helping giving Give them what they need to plan and get Vaccines administered mawr quickly but we know it's not on Lee The amount of vaccine that matters another critical component is creating easily accessible places for Americans to get vaccinated Millions of Americans turn to their local pharmacies every day for their medicines flu shots and much more and pharmacies air readily accessible in most communities with most Americans living within five miles of a pharmacy That's why we're pleased to announce our first phase of the federal retail pharmacy program for Cove in 19 vaccinations This is a key component of President Biden's national strategy offering vaccinations in America's pharmacies Starting on February 11th the federal government will deliver vaccines directly to select pharmacies across the country This will provide MAWR sites for people to get vaccinated in their communities and it's an important component to delivering vaccines equitably This pharmacy program will expand access in neighborhoods across the country She can make an appointment and get your shot conveniently and quickly But I wanted to set expectations appropriately due to the current supply constraints This will be limited when it begins next week In this first phase of the program supply will be at only about 6500 stores nationwide before expanding And in the early phase many pharmacies across the country will not have vaccine or may have very limited supply People should first make sure they meet their states eligibility requirements for vaccinations and then check availability on their local pharmacies Website equity is at the core of how the Center for Disease Control was working with states to select pharmacy partners For this first phase Sites are selected based on their ability to reach some of the populations most at risk for severe illness from Cove in 19 including socially vulnerable communities And the CDC will monitor the data on an ongoing basis to make sure that pharmacies are efficiently and equitably administering vaccinations This initial phase of activating local pharmacies will get more shots and arms and will ensure that pharmacies have the infrastructure and the experience they need to scale up when vaccine supply increases In the months ahead Eventually as we're able to increase supply up to 40,000 pharmacies nationwide could provide Cover 19 vaccinations these air places ranging from local independent pharmacies the national pharmacies and supermarkets This is a critical step to provide the public with convenient trusted places to get vaccinated in their communities Importantly pharmacies they're just one part of our overall effort which also includes mass vaccination sites mobile clinics community health centers and other providers that America's count on each and every day finally central to our strategies to make sure states tribes and territories have the resource is they need to turn vaccines in the vaccinations That's why at the direction of President Biden FEMA has increased its support On his second day in office President Biden directed FEMA so fully reimbursed states for the cost of National Guard personnel and other emergency cost Today we're announcing that we will go even further We will fully reimburse states for the eligible services they provided back to the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020 That means that states will be fully repaid for things like mass gloves and the mobilization of the National Guard and they can use The additional resource is for vaccination efforts An emergency applies moving forward This reimbursement is estimated to cost a total of 3 to $5 billion It is only a small share of the resource is that states need to fight this pandemic including for testing genomic sequencing and mass vaccinations centers Soto fully support states tribes and territories needs to contain the pandemic and vaccinate their population President Biden is requesting $350 billion from Congress and the American rescue Plan As the president has said this is a national emergency and we're treating it as such We're bringing the full force of the federal government to partner with state and local leaders in this efforts were giving Americans the fax they need and we're working to ensure our response is fair and equitable We're doing all we can but it is critical that Congress does its part as well We need Congress to quickly pass the American rescue plan give us the funding we need to continue to scale up our vaccination program and to provide the resource is the state and local leaders need to protect their communities and fight the pandemic With that I'm happy to take a few questions Thank you everybody for joining We have time for a couple of questions from Jeff today First we will go to Carlo Donald with Reuters Good Hi This is this is Carl Thank you for your time So I guess what would be what would be helpful would be just toe Understand First of all you know you mentioned 6 65 100 pharmacies in the program originally How How many vaccine doses do you think you're gonna be pushed through that on a weekly basis And also just want to confirm that for that 3 to 5 billion Does that require the Congress to pass any legislation allocating funds Or is that something FEMA could do so from its existing funding Thank you So a million doses will be allocated next week to those 6500 pharmacies So that's in addition to the 10.5 million doses that are gonna go to states tribes and territories That's the first phase of the pharmacy program and will phase up As I said as supply increases on your FEMA question No that does not require Congress acting That's a decision that the president has made and we will reimburse states that 3 to $5 billion All right Next we'll go to Caitlin Collins with CNN Thank you very much I have two questions for you one on this roll out giving You just said this is in addition to the 10.5 million they're already sending So where are these vaccines coming from This one million that you're going to start sending out What a lot meant is this coming from that you have And then secondly you said to make sure that you can meet the eligibility guidelines before you go to try to get a vaccine at these pharmacies Ah lot of states or in different phases of distribution So is the federal government recommending that those states open up their eligibility So it's the same across the board and therefore ah little less confusing for people What So first of all Caitlin thanks for the questions Good questions Um the additional one million on top of the 10.5 is consistent with Madonna and Pfizer scaling their operations were doing all weekend to monitor and help the manufacturers produces much vaccine is possible So the increase of over 20% That's happened since the beginning of administration that's going directly to states territories and tribes Plus this million to pharmacies directly is all result of the manufacturing scaling up And we hope that we can do all we can And we will do all we can to continue that scale up to make more vaccines available Your second question was on states Each state does have its own policy and individuals should check their own state policy for their eligibility You will recall that President Biden a couple of weeks ago did call on states territories and tribes to move as quickly as possible to make all people 65 over eligible in their states And more than half the states have done so That's an important population More than 80% of the over 400,000 deaths that this country has suffered have been in people that are over 65 years of age Next we'll go to Zeke Miller with a B Thank you Nicole Jeff could on the pharmacy allotments Could you speak thio How those million doses per week will be distributed across the country Uh what metric will be used to sort of ensure equity in terms of the distribution distribution will be population based And then on the president's call for Congress to pass legislation How much quicker would the pace of vaccination be with additional congressional funding And conversely how much lower would it be without congressional action Pharma Thanks sick and and again Good questions Um on the pharma allocation it's allocated the same way we allocate the states tribes and territories based on their populations However Center for Disease Control which has quite a bit of experience working with pharmacies is making sure that we are picking pharmacies in that first phase They're located in areas that are harder to reach to ensure that we have equitable distribution of the of the pharmacy doses and across the board is you know equity is foundational to everything we dio on the American rescue plan we're doing All we possibly can with the resource is we have and we will continue to do so The faster Congress acts the faster we can scale vaccination sites mobile units We can increase testing we can increase emergency supplies So given this pandemic it's important that Congress act as fast as possible so we can scale our efforts and fight the pandemic Azi efficiently and effectively as possible All right we have time for a couple more questions We're gonna go next to Elizabeth Wise with U S A Today Hi Thanks so much for taking my call Ah question about production The states report that they get fluctuating amounts of vaccine every week even though they're ordering the same amount each week Is it that production coming out of the Pfizer Madonna plants buries bye week or what is causing a fluctuation Well that's a Elizabeth That is One of the messages we heard loud and clear through the transition was that it was very hard for states to plan to most effectively vaccinate their populations without a better sense of what their shipment was likely to be the following week And that's why we since we've come in the office of even a minimum of three weeks of visibility So this morning when I was talking to governors about 10.5 million doses being distributed That's not only for the next week but it's for the next three weeks and that allows them to plan accordingly to know what staffing toe have what centers toe open Eso I think historically there had been fluctuation We are very tuned into not having that fluctuation And we are guaranteeing minimum levels of distribution to the states of doses for the next three weeks And we started that last week with 10 million We've moved that up to 10.5 million for the next three weeks So it's really important that states know what's coming And as production increases we hope to increase those minimums across time But always give the three week visibilities of states can plan accordingly Thanks Said last we'll go to end flirty with ABC Hi Thanks for taking my question Jeff Do you have any sense of how the weather has impacted on the East Coast has impacted the rollout of these doses and also on the FEMA runs sites that the President wants to set up Um there are some that are already in place in supporting vaccination sites Are we gonna expect to Seymour along with the pharmacy roll out some FEMA run sites Good questions Andi Thank you First on the weather now I talked to General Purna earlier this morning all vaccine doses have been available to the states on schedule Unfortunately as you know given how hard the storm has hit some location some vaccination sites have had to close or limit their hours So in terms of vaccine distribution to the states that's all worked as planned Despite the challenges of the weather in terms of individual vaccination sites in certain parts of the country they've been hard hit by snow Some of those sites are closed and people are being re scheduled for later in the week Um on FEMA the president that we have had a very active first couple of weeks with more than $1.7 billion going from FEMA to the states to support vaccination Uh some of these sites or were already started and we've helped with technical assistance and resource is to bring them to a higher level There are other sites they're being set up that are gonna be run by the federal government with the help of FEMA potentially military personnel doctors and nurses etcetera So we're making a lot of progress We will meet and likely exceed the president's goal of having 100 community vaccination sites up and running by the end of his first month in office At the same time we're also using utilizing mobile vaccination units to make sure that we're reaching hard to reach communities again with equity being first and foremost as a foundational principle of our vaccination program Um so I think that brings us to the end I wanna thank everybody on board Really appreciate the the interest And we're doing everything we can to um effectively vaccinate individuals across the country We really do need Congress to act and pass the American rescue plan to help us expedite our efforts and make them more effective and more efficient Thank you Yeah yeah