Ross Gianfortune
This is GovExec Daily, where we bring you the federal stories that really matter.  It's March 30, 2021 . I’m Ross Gianfortune.

Ross Gianfortune
While it may feel like it was decades ago, around this time last year, then-President Donald Trump was optimistic about the possibility that Americans celebrating Easter would be able to do so in person. As coronavirus deaths in the spring of 2020 rose, those plans were mostly scuttled. This year, as we approach a second pandemic Easter, the optimism nationwide is more tempered and more based in vaccination progress.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted the task ahead of the U.S. on Friday at the White House.

Jen Psaki
We still have a majority of the population that still needs to be vaccinated although we're working to expedite that there is funding and the American rescue plan, there is funding to also allow for that or Institute or give funding, I should say, to schools to also make that available there. So it's something that will continue to communicate about.

Ross Gianfortune
In the case of public servants, the vaccination efforts continue. Federal agencies are vaccinating employees with the allocations of doses they have received, but civil servants are not only the people doing government work. Millions of contractors work closely with agencies and the variance in their access to agency vaccinations is broad. 

According to reporting by our guest today, agencies that have received direct allocations of coronavirus vaccines have taken very different approaches to vaccinating contractors, with some treating them the same as civil servants and others leaving them to fend for themselves. While contractors are a major part of government work, the inconsistency with which they are getting vaccinated via agencies is a concern for contracting associations.

Joining me after a short break will be GovExec reporter Courtney Bublé. She and I will talk about the discrepancies in agencies vaccinating contractors with whom they work and other coronavirus stories after a short break.

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Ross Gianfortune
Millions of federal contractors work with the federal government, sometimes even side-by-side with civil servants. But, as some agencies vaccinate their workforces, the status of contractors and vaccinations is inconsistent across agencies. 

Courtney Bublé writes the coronavirus roundup at GovExec and she joins me now to talk about the status of contractors in the agency vaccination process and other COVID-19 stories.

Courtney Bublé
Good to be here.

Ross Gianfortune
 Before we get into, who is actually doing what regarding vaccinating contractors. Let's start with the OMB guidance on this exact subject. What does the Office of Management and Budget, have to say about agencies vaccinating the contractors that these agencies work so closely with?

Courtney Bublé
So, to my knowledge, there hasn't been any guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, they didn't respond to my several requests for this story, I probably would have seen it if it was on their website as you know, these are public documents and they have issued, other forms of guidance for contractors over the past year plus for the Coronavirus, but it doesn't appear they have done so for vaccines, that's not to say that they won't in the future or they're not thinking about it maybe but there hasn't been anything yet.

Ross Gianfortune
Yeah, it's amazing how that kind of falls by the wayside when there are so many people involved. After your story you reached out to agencies to find out how they are distributing vaccines to contractors, which agencies are doing what. And how's it kind of going?

Courtney Bublé
So I'll first start by saying that this is definitely a fluid situation, it could be subject to be changing very soon, but based on the responses I received for this story. The following agencies that have already offered vaccines to some, if not all of their contractors, include the DEA IHS, the Department of Defense, and possibly the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the Justice Department kind of based on you know your reading of those responses I'm in several other agencies that I spoke with while they haven't received direct allocations of vaccines yet they did say that they are considering contractors in their plans to do so and yeah, like you said earlier, these are all kind of different, based on you know different agencies. For example, the Department of Homeland Security told their contractors about two weeks ago that at this time they can't offer them vaccines now obviously contractors can get vaccines out in the community, they don't need to necessarily get them from their agencies. But we're definitely seeing some difference in how federal employees are being offered them, if that is the case versus contractors. 

Ross Gianfortune
The Professional Services Council, which is the association representing you know hundreds of contractors. I would imagine they're in favor of agencies, bringing vaccines to contractors and vaccine because they work with them. What do they say about this?

Courtney Bublé 
Well, while they didn't address this issue specifically During a briefing last week. Avery bridgeu The President and CEO of PSC. He spoke about how well contracting officers can't require them to get the vaccines just yet because it only has emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. He thinks that could possibly change once it gets the full authority. And he's also overall just encouraging the administration to take contractors into consideration when they issued a guidance, their guidance and issue a uniform standard guidance, kind of like they do for agencies about return to offices, you know, health and safety protocols which could include vaccines, because they don't want to see just a patchwork of things happening, they want some type of consistent thing to go off up to tell their members.

Unknown Speaker  6:34  
Yeah, I mean it's something we've talked about a lot on the show and just generally that the shutdowns were so acute. Last year, that everything just kind of stopped, and it was all sort of within a very small window. As the vaccine rollout sort of becomes more elongated, that's going to be a little different than I imagined that will track with the vaccines. Going to agencies and contractors.

Courtney Bublé 
And just one other point I'd like to make is that I spoke with an official who represents, intelligence and defense contractors and he spoke about the importance of contractors in the intelligence community getting the vaccines because a lot of them can tell work they have to be in these tight close quarters this skips to work on classified matters, so he said that it's so important that they do have access to vaccines. If and when you know these agencies get the right allocations because they can't just, you know they can tell where you have to be in a worksite.

Unknown Speaker  7:35  
So I guess in general it's going to move out a little and say, and ask what are agencies doing to distribute vaccines directly to staff and populations they serve for example like Veterans Affairs or the Indian Health Services agencies?

Courtney Bublé
Our colleague Eric Katz has been following this very closely at the various agencies, how they're all kind of, you know, it's, you know, they had to get their plans approved I believe by the CDC but you know they all have kind of their own approach to it but I'm at IHS, for example, they told me that they started distributing and administering vaccines back in December. Following the CDC recommendations and they first focused on healthcare workers frontline essential workers, elders and those with high risk, medical conditions and they noted that some I just contractors could have been within that, and since then they've been expanding their vaccine efforts into the community. They said quote to support community immunity many IHS, tribal and Indian health programs are now providing COVID vaccines to members of the local community within vaccine supply. And this was based off of, You know, local needs, unique circumstances. And they're also providing vaccines now to people who are not necessarily part of these facilities but within the local community and once again, they're kind of at the discretion to do that,

Unknown Speaker  8:53  
I imagine giving these agencies discretion to kind of spread the vaccine out as much as possible helps everyone as we try to get everybody toward herd immunity. You know you like I said, have you read the roundup for us sometimes and there's a lot of stuff in there that I think would be of interest to listeners, so are there Feds and agencies who are getting priority for vaccinations are there ways that these things are making it to civil servants.
Courtney Bublé
Oh, there are certainly various calls to increase the vaccine supply for federal employees and made them on the front lines. For example, recently the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, they call on the President to prioritize giving vaccines to employees at the National Personnel Records Center, because they haven't been able to you know, work that much in the offices and as a result there's a huge backlog of requests that veterans need in order to get their benefits. And that's become a big problem. Now the UN a briefing last Wednesday, a reporter asked if the White House is considering expanding access to vaccines for federal employees and press secretary Jen Psaki said well, she would have to check with the COVID response team. She didn't know that everybody will become eligible by May 1 for vaccines. And that obviously includes some government employees in many states so far I've said that they will be able to lift the restrictions on May 1 which is about a month away at this point,

Unknown Speaker  10:25  
we're only a few weeks from April so or no sorry a few days from April so time certainly is of the essence. Let's move on to a few other stories you know the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is sort of the standard over in Europe and there's been a lot of concern over there about their data. There were people who have been saying we should have it here to get more doses of all kinds, but there's a lot of controversy there so what's the latest on the possibility for that vaccine to come over here.

Courtney Bublé
I'll just recap quickly what happened last week. So last Monday, AstraZeneca announced that their vaccine which they developed with the University of Oxford, was 79% effective and that there weren't any large safety concerns and this was following a large clinical trial in the US Chile and Peru, and they said that they were going to continue to analyze their data and Sue and apply for emergency use authorization from the FDA, and now they had received some funding from the US, biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as well as NIH for this trial, but then a day later, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which is within NIH released the statement which a lot of people said was kind of unprecedented, saying that they, they may have been some outdated information included in the release like from this trial um they raised some concerns over that and AstraZeneca, kind of backed up what they did, but then on Wednesday they released new data saying the efficacy was at 76%, which is a little bit lower than they initially did, and they they still plan to submit for emergency use authorization, and this comes as there have been new reports, I think even as early as they're as recent as today, I'm from Germany about blood clots, resulting from using this vaccine and there's previous issues with that in Europe. So there's a lot of already there's been a lot of skepticism about the vaccines and I don't think that this is going to help that especially if people have a choice about getting a vaccine and is approved, I feel like that's going to be a bit of an issue.

Unknown Speaker  12:34  
Yeah, I imagine that that's not the kind of fire anybody wants to play with right now, especially considering the trajectory that the vaccination numbers are on. Speaking of which, President Biden, his big promise was 100 shots in 100 million shots and 100 days been passed that in the 58 or 59 day range, and they're re established a 200 million shots in 100 days. Now, you also reported on Monday, or also wrote about the strategy the vaccine strategy that the administration is sort of rethinking some of it because of the cost, how do those things kind of measure up and how do they kind of coalesce?

Courtney Bublé
Well, the COVID response team said on Friday that they are now up to 25 federally run mass vaccination sites, and this is in addition to the the pharmacies and the community health centers do they have partnered with and overall, they're 50,000 locations nationwide approximate where people can get vaccines, and we, me included a story in one of our reports today from Politico that they are rethinking their strategy about these mass vaccination sites due to costs, but they haven't said anything formally about that yet in terms of actually making changes. Now also last week. White House Coronavirus just Coronavirus response coordinator, Jeff signs. He said that for the last two weeks we are consistently vaccinating 2.5 million Americans per day, and to hit that goal of 200 million shots by the 100th day in office which is April 30, they will need to keep up that pace every day for the next five weeks, which is the equivalent of vaccinating a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium 50 times a day, or the entire population of the city of Houston in just one day. And just for reference Yankee Stadium can hold up to 46,536 fans, which is a lot greater than Citi Field, where the Mets play also New York at 41,922. Now President Biden is speaking later today about vaccines a little bit after we record this message, this podcast, so I don't know if they're gonna have any changing productions with that. But it seems like they're, they're on pace to hit that goal.

Ross Gianfortune 
It's some bit of good news in the march of rising cases in places like Michigan, in New Jersey but you know obviously we'll keep an eye on it. I certainly know you will, and such Courtney thanks for being on the show with us. 

Courtney Bublé
Thanks

Ross Gianfortune
Thanks for listening to GovExec Daily. Our show was produced by Adam Butler and hosted by me, Ross Gianfortune. We want to thank Courtney Bublé for joining the program. Our music is the song “Signals” by Catfish Dancing. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can email us any feedback at podcast @ govexec.com or hit us on Twitter @ Govexec.  
 
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