The Federal Emergency Management Agency is asking the Pentagon to help with President Joe Biden's plan to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations across the country over the next three months, multiple reports said Thursday.
The Department of Defense is looking it over, CNN reported.
"The department is evaluating the request, and what kinds of support it can provide. Given the significance of the request, it will be reviewed urgently but carefully to determine what DOD assets can safely be made available to support the effort," Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement.
"As Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin has said, DOD is committed to do as much as it possibly can to assist the whole-of-government effort against COVID-19," he added.
While the statement didn’t provide the number of troops that could be involved, an unnamed official told Reuters it could number in the thousands.
According to The Hill, possible solutions could include sending up to 10,000 active duty and National Guard forces to vaccination mega-hubs.
Biden said on Monday he’s set a goal of vaccinating 1.5 million people per day in the coming weeks.
“It’s going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we’ve ever tried in this country, but I think we can do that,” Biden said during a press conference.
But White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said the goal was aspirational, and White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt the next day said it’ll be “months” before everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one, The Hill reported.
In remarks Tuesday to CNN, Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain noted a number of hurdles the administration faces in reaching its vaccination goals.
"It's not just vaccines,” he said, the news outlet reported. "In some states … the problem is a lack of people to give shots. We're working on surging that capacity. In some states there aren't enough places. We've announced the creation of federal vaccination centers. So we need more vaccine, we need more vaccinations, we need more places to give the vaccinations. We are working on all three of those things."
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