Vaccine rollout skips TSA screeners, air-traffic controllers
Alan Levin, Bloomberg
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A TSA agent wearing a protective mask screens travelers at a checkpoint at O Hare International Airport in Chicago on June 13, 2020.Bloomberg photo by Patrick T. Fallon.
They re essential workers performing critical safety work and have been assigned priority designation to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
Yet tens of thousands of airport security screeners, air-traffic controllers and federal accident investigators who must report to work in spite of the virus ravaging the U.S. haven t gotten the shot and aren t sure how and when they will. It s incredibly frustrating, said Jennifer Homendy, one of five members of the National Transportation Safety Board. The vaccine rollout from my point of view has been mismanaged.
Biden Administration Seeks More Doses Plus Help to Inject Bloomberg 25/01/2021 Elise Young and Josh Wingrove
(Bloomberg) The Biden administration said the U.S. needs more people to administer Covid-19 vaccinations, in addition to the doses themselves and places for people to get them.
“This is a multifaceted challenge it’s not just about having supply,” Jen Psaki, press secretary to President Joe Biden, said at a White House briefing Monday. The administration is calling for hiring 100,000 public-health workers in part to ensure that there are more vaccinators, she said. “It’s also about having more people who can physically put shots into the arms of Americans, and it’s about ensuring we have places that that can be done.”
Here comes the vaccine army, with new-to-the-needle volunteers
Elise Young, Bloomberg
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Cars lined up along the roadway to get a vaccination in Wantagh, New York on Jan. 14.Bloomberg photo by Al Bello
U.S. taxpayers have spent at least $12.4 billion for private companies to develop covid-19 vaccines. Now they re turning to an army of hypodermic-wielding volunteers, some with little practical experience, to help immunize 330 million Americans.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is relaxing rules to allow podiatrists, dentists and pharmacy students to give shots. In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis is asking for help from chiropractors and optometrists. Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey are recruiting health-care retirees to fill shifts at stadiums, vacant department stores and other spaces repurposed as government-run vaccination megasites.