Biden upends Trump's calculation of who gets federal vaccination help

The Bronx and Queens locations for two federally "managed" distribution centers, which can vaccinate up to 3,000 people a day, had already been picked.The White House declined repeated requests to interview administration officials about the federal vaccination effort, and Cuomo's press office did not reply to a request for comment.But Andy Slavitt, the White House senior adviser for the Covid-19 response, praised the way the administration is using metrics during a briefing for the media Friday."The goal is to launch vaccination sites that use processes and relocations that promote equity and deploy the CDC's social vulnerability index," he said.In New York, the index was ultimately used in a more targeted fashion than countywide statistics, a FEMA spokesperson said.In conjunction with its own regional office and New York's government, FEMA officials in Washington "identified clusters of census tracts with a CDC Social Vulnerability Index of .75 or greater, a population of 30,000 or greater, and proximity and availability of transportation," the spokesperson said in an e-mail response.When the pandemic first overwhelmed the U.S. in the late winter of 2020, Trump set up an interagency White House coronavirus task force and tapped the Health and Human Services Department as the lead agency for the response. The Biden administration is also developing plans to open federally managed shot-distribution centers in Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan in March, according to administration documents obtained exclusively by NBC News.Biden had promised to set up 100 federally supported vaccination centers in his first 30 days in office — an easy bar to clear given that FEMA documents show that more than 400 state and local centers have received some federal assistance."This program is directed toward underserved communities," the administration official said.