Troops to support vaccination efforts

President Joe Biden has called to set up 100 mass vaccination centers around the country within a month. The Pentagon plans to start by deploying more than 1,100 troops to five facilities to help more people obtain COVID-19 shots. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked for as many as 100,000 service members to staff the sites eventually.

How is the campaign going so far? About 2 percent of Americans have received both doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said widespread immunity requires vaccinating 70-80 percent of the population, or more than 230 million people. An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to meet on Feb. 26 to consider Johnson & Johnson’s request for emergency use authorization for its new vaccine. Developers in Oxford, England, say the AstraZeneca vaccine appears to be effective against the variant of the coronavirus that surfaced in Britain.

Dig deeper: Read Charissa Koh’s report in Compassion about the debate over when to vaccinate prison inmates.