The Biden administration on Monday announced it will nearly double Medicare reimbursement rates for administering COVID-19 shots in an effort to scale up vaccination efforts.
Health care providers will be reimbursed $40 per shot, up from $23 per shot, or $80 total for a two-dose coronavirus vaccine, said Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response.
“Now this will make it easier for more health care providers to get out into communities and give more COVID shots to people in need,” Mr. Slavitt said during a daily briefing. “We need this heroic team in particular to make sure that our highest risk and underserved populations are cared for.”
Under the recently enacted coronavirus relief package, the administration also will cover 100% of the cost for Medicaid and children’s health insurance beneficiaries to get vaccinated.
“It means that vaccines will continue to be free to you,” Mr. Slavitt said. “It also means that doctors and nurses and health care providers you trust will be out in your communities administering vaccines because the federal government will now pay them more for each shot they deliver.”
The U.S. has averaged about 2.4 million shots administered per day over the last seven days, according to the senior adviser. He added that nearly two-thirds of older adults and 30% of U.S. adults have received at least their first dose of a vaccine.
About 21% of the population, or 69,784,210 people, have received at least one vaccine dose and 11%, or 37,459,269 people, are fully vaccinated as of Sunday, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
A study released Monday by the CDC found that nearly 96% of 14,205,768 people who got a two-dose vaccine received their second dose within the recommended time frame.
New daily cases of the coronavirus fluctuate between 50,000 and 60,000, with the most recent seven-day average at 52,500 cases each day, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during Monday’s briefing. She noted that hospitalization rates have declined to just over 4,700 each day and deaths have dropped to 1,200 per day over the last week.
Although trends show improvement, Dr. Walensky warned about the warming weather, increased travel and the urge to relax or disregard public health precautions amid the ongoing pandemic.
“We have come a long way from where we were in early January, but we still have much work to do. In some parts of the country, the weather has started to warm up and with the clocks changed this weekend, our days are seeing a little bit more sunshine,” Dr. Walensky said. “And with the coming warming weather, I know it’s tempting to want to relax and to let our guard down particularly after a hard winter that sadly saw the highest level of cases and deaths during the pandemic so far.”
“We have seen footage of people enjoying spring break festivities maskless. This is all in the context of still 50,000 cases per day. Equally concerning are the surges we are now seeing in some European countries, countries that have had strikingly similar trends in surges during the pandemic as the United States,” she said. “Each took an upward trend after a disregard of known mitigation strategies. They simply took their eye off the ball.”
Vaccination efforts paired with natural immunity should help the U.S. better manage the coronavirus pandemic although parts of Europe are seeing surges in COVID-19 cases and Italy shut down again, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former chief of the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS last week.
Also, the White House said that some states could open vaccine eligibility to all adults before the May 1 deadline President Biden set last week during his address on the pandemic.
The administration additionally announced that Mr. Biden is expanding the range of professionals eligible to deliver the vaccine under the public health declaration to include dentists, EMTs, midwives, optometrists, paramedics, physician assistants, podiatrists, respiratory therapists and veterinarians.
• Shen Wu Tan can be reached at stan@washingtontimes.com.
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