Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday mobilized the North Carolina National Guard to speed up the state’s vaccine rollout.
“Ensuring COVID-19 vaccines are administered quickly is our top priority right now,” Cooper tweeted. “We will use all resources and personnel needed. I’ve mobilized the NC National Guard to provide support to local health provides as we continue to increase the pace of vaccinations.”
North Carolina has one of the lower rates of vaccine administration in the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures.
The slow vaccine rollout is not simply a North Carolina phenomenon, and a number of health experts have criticized the vaccine operation nationwide.
“US has really botched the vaccine rollout,” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist who recently left Harvard University for the Federation of American Scientists, said Monday on Twitter. “Only 4 million shots administered over a month, despite promise of 20 million by end of 2020. US needs to give 7-10 million vaccines a week.”
But the process has been particularly slow in North Carolina, based on data released by the CDC. As of Monday, the CDC said North Carolina had 395,100 doses delivered and had administered 101,351. The state’s vaccination rate per 100,000 people made North Carolina one of the slowest seven states in the country.
Cooper’s move comes two days after state Rep.
, D-Cumberland, asked Cooper to use the National Guard
“The numbers of North Carolinians contracting Covid daily is staggering, and the slow distribution of the vaccines is disturbing,” Richardson wrote in his letter. “Now is the time to act promptly and with a renewed commitment to bipartisan results.”
The letter states that 26 states planned to mobilize their Guard units to aid in vaccine distribution, a figure reported by the Department of Defense National Guard Bureau in mid-December.
The figure may be lower now. A bureau spokeswoman told WRAL News on Tuesday that seven states are using National Guard units providing some kind of support, but added that may not be a complete count.
Richardson also called on General Assembly leaders to come back into session on vaccine issues, or at least be ready for action on day one of a legislative session already scheduled to start next week.
Just what legislation might be needed isn’t laid out in the letter, but Richardson said the state should “empower and fund our National Guard to overcome the roadblocks currently impeding the efficient and rapid delivery of vaccines to our citizens.”
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