The nation's capital has asked the Biden administration for help with lagging vaccine rollout, but it hasn't come yet
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s fellow residents in the nation’s capital are getting vaccinated for COVID-19 at a slower rate than almost anywhere else in the country.
Out of 59 U.S. states and territories, the District of Columbia currently ranks 55th in terms of the number of residents who have been vaccinated. Only the U.S. Virgin Islands, Georgia, Puerto Rico and Micronesia have managed to give a smaller percentage of their populations at least one vaccine shot, according to data from the New York Times.
Faced with these figures, local leaders in D.C. and the surrounding suburbs have asked the Biden administration for help with the vaccine rollout due to the large number of federal workers in the area. So far, those requests have gone unanswered.
Rep. Don Beyer is one of six House members representing the D.C. metropolitan area who sent a letter to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Personnel Management on Feb. 18 asking the federal government to “federalize its response to vaccinating its employees with a direct allocation.” The letter cited the fact that the national capital region is home to “the largest concentration of federal employees,” many of whom qualify as essential workers.
A source said the letter, which was signed by members from Virginia and Maryland as well as Washington’s nonvoting House delegate, did not receive a response.
“We continue to feel strongly that the federal government should vaccinate its own employees through a separate, federalized allocation, and we remain hopeful that the Biden administration will consider our request,” Beyer, a Democrat whose northern Virginia district includes some of the city’s major suburbs, told Yahoo News.
“Right now local jurisdictions in the national capital region are having to vaccinate the large number of federal workers who qualify as essential under vaccination guidelines. It’s a big labor pool that affects our vaccination efforts in a unique way, making the lines and waits longer for the federal workforce and everyone else.”
Beyer further said he’s concerned about the number of essential workers in the region “reporting to work in person who still can’t get a vaccine.”
“All of these problems would be made significantly better if the federal government can vaccinate its own workforce,” he said.
Beyer and the other local members of Congress aren’t the only ones who have asked the government for help vaccinating federal workers in the region. On Feb. 10, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, along with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, sent a letter to the heads of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking the agencies to vaccinate some of the federal workforce in the area.
Specifically, the local officials asked the Biden administration to establish “a federally supported and operated vaccine site” with its own dedicated supply for the more than 281,000 federal workers in the region. The letter noted that an unusually high number of these workers are classified as essential, making them a burden on the early stages of the vaccine rollout.
“The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia simply do not have the resources available to support these priority vaccinations,” the letter said.
Soon after the letter was sent, multiple local news outlets reported that the request had been denied. However, a source with one of the local jurisdictions who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations said that while the federal agencies initially rejected the request, they subsequently agreed to reconsider it.
A spokesperson for FEMA told Yahoo News that the request from D.C., Maryland and Virginia is “currently still under review.”
“We're looking at a host of options for what support FEMA may be able to provide to assist, augment or expedite vaccine delivery. As such, it would be premature to discuss publicly until we have explored all those options,” the spokesperson said.
“FEMA reviews all requests from states, territories and tribes that are submitted and is working with our partners to provide federal support through deployment of personnel, equipment and supplies, and expedited funding to assist, augment and expedite vaccines to everyone in America.”
A source familiar with the situation further said, “The administration is laser-focused on expanding vaccine supply for all Americans and in active discussions with Maryland, Virginia and D.C. about how we can continue to help their vaccination efforts.”
Spokespeople for the governors of Virginia and Maryland did not respond to requests for comment. But D.C. Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio, who also serves as Bowser's chief of staff, credited the new administration with being more transparent about vaccine supplies and doing more to deliver doses.
Falcicchio, however, also said the request for federal support is still pending and argued that it would help officials in the region with their vaccine rollout.
“It is a lot smoother for all of us if the federal government employees have a … single access point for the vaccine, and it helps us take care of our residents a little bit better,” he said.
Around the country, there is still more demand for vaccines than supply. The Biden administration has dramatically increased the stockpile of vaccines and announced on March 2 that there will be enough on hand for every adult in the country by the end of May.
In the meantime, multiple states and territories have made requests for federal support. The situation in D.C., however, is unique because of the amount of federal workers in the region. It’s also notable because of how much the city’s vaccine rollout has lagged behind the rest of the country.
Both Maryland and Virginia are near the middle of the pack in terms of the percentage of residents who have been vaccinated. Meanwhile, Washington is near the bottom, and its rollout has been plagued by technical issues. The figures are particularly stark given the fact that the District of Columbia is smaller than almost any other U.S. territory in terms of physical size. And unlike island territories like Puerto Rico, it does not have the challenges of distributing vaccines across a wide and sometimes inhospitable area with remote pockets of people.
Part of the issue has been that a large number of nonresidents have been vaccinated in D.C. According to data from the city, over 37 percent of the vaccines that have been administered there have gone to nonresidents. Falccichio, the mayor’s chief of staff, explained that this is due to the fact that a large portion of the city’s workforce comes from Maryland and Virginia.
“What we see in our numbers is that we see a lot of our essential workers that we are vaccinating, and that goes from health care workers all the way to teachers, childcare providers … live outside of the district,” Falccichio said.
Late last year, during the initial weeks of the vaccine rollout, both Maryland and Virginia donated some of their supply to Washington. However, those additional doses were not enough to offset the number of nonresidents in the city who have been vaccinated.
Falcicchio described getting more support to vaccinate the federal workforce as one of the city’s top concerns at the moment.
“In general, we need more vaccines, but that’s not unique to the district,” he said. “Dealing with the federal workforce helps us manage demand, and that’s what's so important right now.”
In recent months, debate has heated up about statehood for both D.C. and Puerto Rico. Both territories are near the bottom of the vaccine ranking, and Falcicchio said it is apparent to the city’s leaders that not being a state has hampered their vaccine rollout.
“There are a lot of things in the District of Columbia that would be easier if we had two senators and a member of Congress who had a vote. So that is definitely the case,” he said.
“When you talk about sort of the regional delegation, sending letters and really advocating on behalf of their residents, we are handicapped in that sense because we don't have those senators and a member of Congress who can vote.”
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