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Here's how the government divides up available vaccine doses

COVID-19 vaccine allocation and distribution isn't just random. State and federal leaders put rules in place to make it fair.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — President Joe Biden says by July, we'll have 300 million doses of the vaccine.

"We've now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans," Biden said.

But until then: how are the shots divided up? To make the process more fair, federal and state leaders have created rules about how the vaccines travel from the factory to you.

Under the federal Emergency Use Act, only the federal government can buy the vaccine. State's can't buy the vaccine directly from the pharmaceutical companies. That allows the feds to divide the doses among the states and territories to make sure richer states don't have an unfair advantage. How they do that has changed frequently, but one Congressional insider says the latest formula distributes vaccine doses based solely on the number of residents in a state or territory over the age of 18."

Right now North Carolina is getting 120,000 doses per week. 90,000 are divided up among county population. The remaining 30,000 are for new providers and community vaccination events chosen based on equity and speed of distributing shots.

"I'm going to be asking for more vaccine for Guilford County," said County Commissioner Skip Alston.

Alston says that's we should be asking for more doses. He pointed out that the Greensboro Coliseum is capable of vaccinating thousands of people a day.

"We might be able to be a help to our neighboring counties," Alston said.

Until then, we'll keep an eye on the people who call the shots about who gets the vaccine next.

   

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