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- The Trump administration will on Tuesday recommend expanding vaccine eligibility to everyone over 65 years old, Axios reported.
- Currently, only essential workers and those over 75 are getting their COVID-19 shots.
- Axios cited an unnamed senior administration official.
- The vaccines available in the US require two doses. The guidelines also prioritize more people getting their first shot, rather than holding back doses to give people their second dose, Axios reported.
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The Trump administration will on Tuesday recommend that everyone over 65 years old gets a COVID-19 vaccination as soon as possible, Axios reported.
Previously, only essential workers and those over 75 have been eligible to receive shots. Individual states are taking charge of vaccine rollouts, but the new guidelines are designed to get Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible against COVID-19, Axios reported, citing an unnamed senior administration official.
The New York Times also reported the incoming guidelines.
The two vaccines approved in the US – one from Pfizer and BioNTech, and one from Moderna – require two doses. The proposed guidelines will recommended prioritizing more people getting their first shot, rather than holding back doses to give people their second, Axios reported.
This is the strategy that President-Elect Joe Biden has said he plans to adopt when he takes office on January 20.
The guidelines reportedly recommend expanding vaccination sites to include more pharmacies and community health centres.
The US vaccine strategy got off to a slow start in December, with experts blaming patchwork, state-specific rollout for slow uptake.
"People need to know how to get the vaccine, when to get the vaccine, and who should get the vaccine, and then how those decisions are being made," Marissa Levine, a public-health professor at the University of South Florida, told Business Insider on January 2.
So far, 9.27 million doses have been administered in the US, according to a tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with at least 379,862 people completing the two-dose vaccination regimen.