Joe Biden plans fewer rules, more shots in revised vaccination drive

WASHINGTON — President-Elect Joe Biden proposed to overhaul eligibility rules for coronavirus vaccines and open more sites to receive shots, but his plan to rev up U.S. inoculations largely retains the bones of the Trump administration’s system.

Biden’s pledges are vague about timelines, reinforcing his previous warnings that there’ll be no quick fix.

“We didn’t get into all of this overnight. And we won’t get out of it overnight, either,” Biden said in remarks delivered in Wilmington, Delaware. “We remain in a very dark winter.”

Biden and his aides have increasingly criticized the Trump administration’s vaccine rollout, which has fallen short of inoculation targets so far. But the president-elect’s plan amounts to a revision of Trump’s effort, not a rewrite.

“The vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure so far,” he said. Five changes, he said, will help the U.S. meet his goal of 100 million doses in his first 100 days.

“You have my word: we will manage the hell out of this operation,” he said.

As president, Biden will encourage states to abandon a complex series of priority groups that’s been used to triage vaccination and instead focus on giving shots to front-line essential workers and anyone over 65, according to an announcement Friday by his transition office. He plans to set up community vaccination centers and mobile clinics and “jump-start” an effort to make shots available at pharmacies.

Implementation of priority groups was driven by science but “has been too rigid and confusing,” Biden said. “There are tens of millions of doses of vaccine sitting around unused in freezers across the country” while people who want vaccinations can’t get them, he said.

He said he would instruct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin setting up community vaccination sites on his first day in office, in locations like gymnasiums, sports stadiums and community centers. “Mobile clinics moving from community to community” will partner will local health care professionals to get vaccinations to “hard-to-reach” communities, he said.