Biden administration is sending in the troops to help California battle virus

WASHINGTON — As President Joe Biden races to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control, his administration is pouring additional resources into California, which has become the epicenter of the crisis during a deadly winter wave of infections.

Pentagon officials announced Friday that it was sending active-duty troops to the state to help administer vaccines at two community sites — one at Cal State Los Angeles, the other at the Oakland Coliseum — that were unveiled earlier in the week. More than 200 troops are expected to arrive in the coming days, the first wave of 1,110 who are expected to help operate additional sites in other parts of the country.

Officials said their goal is to deliver 6,000 shots per day at each location. Biden has said he hopes to establish 100 vaccination centers.

The deployment puts California at the leading edge of a nationwide effort that Biden pledged to speed up the inoculation process and turn the page on the haphazard management of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

Taming the pandemic in the country’s most populous state would not only advance Biden’s goal of alleviating the crisis, but also satisfy his commitment to respond more equitably to the virus. The pandemic’s victims in California are more likely to be low-income and Latino and living in overcrowded housing.

“It’s a great first step. We still have a lot to do,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Los Angeles Democrat whose district will host one of the new federally run vaccination centers. “But in my conversations with the White House, they know it’s absolutely necessary to focus on equity and how vaccines get out there and how we get vaccines into the arms.”

Gomez said it’s been a “night and day” difference from the Trump administration, and he said White House officials have been receptive to California leaders who urged them to send more resources to hard-hit communities.

Biden is also spotlighting the economic fallout from COVID-19 in California as he pushes for a $1.9 trillion relief package on Capitol Hill. The White House is releasing on Saturday the first installment of what it’s billing as Biden’s version of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” The video will feature a conversation between Biden and an unemployed worker from Roseville, California, who lost her job at a clothing company because of the pandemic.

The Biden administration’s campaign against the coronavirus has proved to be a massive logistical challenge, which the president has called “one of the most difficult operational challenges that we’ve ever undertaken as a nation.”

In what the administration called a major step in combating the pandemic, officials announced Friday that they would harness wartime powers to help Pfizer meet its target for producing vaccines, which are being rolled out too slowly to meet the vast demand for shots.

“I would love to tell you we were sitting on stockpiles of vaccines that we found when we got here, but unfortunately that’s not the case,” said Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to Biden’s task force on COVID-19. “What we’ve done is we have been distributing vaccines as quickly as possible.”

Invoking the Defense Production Act is intended to ensure that drugmaker Pfizer can obtain the filling pumps and filtration units needed to manufacture its vaccine and meet its production target.

Pfizer and Moderna, the latter a bio-tech firm, have won approval to produce vaccines by the Food and Drug Administration, and are each slated to deliver 100 million doses by the end of March. The Biden administration said they expect 600 million total doses will have been produced by summer’s end. Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant, is soon expected to win approval to begin distributing its vaccine.

Biden’s efforts to boost vaccine production represents his first use of the Defense Production Act, which helps the federal government procure materials critical to national security.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki conceded Friday that it’s been too difficult for Americans to navigate the vaccine process, which can involve a bewildering array of websites to secure an appointment that sometimes gets canceled due to a lack of supplies.

“It’s completely confusing, has been around the country,” she said. Asked what the federal government was doing to improve the systems that are run by state and local officials, she said that “there are a range of options under consideration” but did not provide specifics.