White House rebuffs call to send more vaccine doses to certain states

The White House on Friday said it planned to send additional staff to help with vaccinations in hard-hit states but rebuffed calls to send more doses of the vaccine.

“We will be offering to states with significant increases in cases a set of additional tools to help them to stem the spread,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday.

That includes additional federal personnel to help with vaccinations, as well as more testing capacity and more therapeutics to treat people with the virus.

But the offer will not include more doses of the vaccine itself, something that officials in Michigan, in particular, have been calling for.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) called on President Biden to send more doses given the worrying spike in cases in the state, as have several prominent public health experts and members of the state’s congressional delegation.

Zients argued the vaccine is still needed everywhere in the country.

“There are tens of millions of people across the country in each and every state and county who have not yet been vaccinated and the fair and equitable way to distribute the vaccine is based on the adult population by state, tribe and territory,” he said.

“That’s how it’s been done and we will continue to do so,” he added. “The virus is unpredictable. We don’t know where the next increase in cases could occur.”