Biden Administration Announces Upcoming COVID-19 Plans for Family Vaccinations, Schools and the Omicron Variant

Today, President Biden spoke at the National Institutes of Health to deliver remarks on their plan to continue the fight against COVID-19 as we enter the winter months and face the Omicron variant.

Firstly, the administration announced a new effort to launch family vaccination clinics across the country. These clinics will be held at community health centers, schools and other trusted locations, and some will be mobile to reach further into hard-to-reach communities and "vaccine deserts." The President also declared new steps to ensure that the nearly 100 million eligible Americans who have not yet gotten their booster shot, get one as soon as possible in accordance with guidance released by the CDC earlier this week. Families can text their zip code to 438829 to find an available vaccine location near them or visit vaccines.gov.

Second, Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) will start paying health care providers to talk to families about the importance of getting their kids vaccinated. Together, these programs cover 82 million people and nearly half of all children in the country and can be counted on as trusted sources of information for families.

Finally, the President announced that the CDC will be releasing new findings and guidance in the weeks ahead on “test to stay” and quarantining policies to keep kids in the classroom and a new Safe School Checklist detailing a set of actions that every school can take to get their staff and students vaccinated – including hosting school-located vaccination clinics, hosting community-based and family vaccination clinics and events, implementing vaccination requirements for school staff and getting eligible vaccinated school staff booster shots. President Biden stressed that the best tool to stop transmission and keep our schools open is to vaccinate everyone who is eligible.

The administration also released a new School Communities Toolkit with resources for school district leaders, teachers, parent leaders and school supporters that want to help increase confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in their school communities, answer questions, and outline school guidance.

You can read the full release here.