Military will have lowkey role in vaccine distribution
WASHINGTON — When President Trump talks about efforts to deliver the coronavirus vaccine to millions of Americans eager to return to their normal lives, he often says he is “counting on the military” to get it done.
Trump has given the impression that troops would be packing up vials, transporting them from factories to pharmacies and perhaps even administering shots. And, at times, military officers working on the sprawling interagency program to move those vaccine doses from drug companies into doctors’ offices have indicated the same thing.
In reality, the role of the military has been less public and more pervasive than this characterization suggests.
When companies have lacked the physical spaces needed to conduct their drug trials, the Defense Department has acquired trailers and permits to create popup medical sites in parking lots. When a required piece of plastic or glass was in short supply, the military leveraged a law passed during the Korean War to force manufacturers to move them to the front of the line.
But the distribution of vaccines will be left largely to their producers and commercial transportation companies. Black Hawk helicopters will not be landing next to neighborhood drugstores to drop off doses. No troops will be administering shots.
“It is extremely unlikely that anyone from the government will touch a vaccine, whether that’s loading a truck, unloading a truck, moving dry ice or actually injecting the vaccine before Americans getting it,” said Paul Mango, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services and the main spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, the multiagency federal consortium for fasttracking a vaccine.
However, he added, “every logistical detail you could think of, needles, syringes, swabs, bandages, dry ice,” could be procured through the government contracting process, and often faster than through the private sector.
Scores of Defense Department employees are laced through the government offices involved in the effort, making up a large portion of the federal personnel devoted to the effort. Those numbers have led some current and former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to privately grumble that the military’s role in Operation Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its core, a public health campaign.
“Frankly, it has been breathtaking to watch,” said Paul Ostrowski, the director of supply, production and distribution for Operation Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieutenant general who was selected to manage logistics for the program by Gen. Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed.
The two pharmaceutical companies leading the vaccine race, Pfizer and Moderna, have estimated that they will have 45 million doses, or enough to vaccinate 22.5 million Americans, by early next year.
But when it comes to the herculean task of vaccine distribution, the job will largely fall to the manufacturers to get the vaccines from loading docks to pharmacies and medical offices.
The military says it can use its airplanes and helicopters to deliver vaccines to remote locations, but only if no other means of transportation are feasible.