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Sarbanes Highlights Urgent Need to Recruit Additional Health Care Workers to Administer the COVID-19 Vaccine Across America

February 3, 2021

“We Are Going to Need People – That’s Often the Bottleneck We Face”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a House Health Subcommittee hearing today, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called for a collective national effort to recruit more health care workers to administer the COVID-19 vaccine in every American community.

"The pressure that's been placed on our public health infrastructure, and just broadly on our health care system by the pandemic, has exposed these workforce shortages," said Congressman Sarbanes. "And of course, has aggravated them in many places because the health care workers themselves have come down with [COVID-19] and they've been knocked out of work – many have lost their lives."

Sarbanes continued: "As we try to deliver the vaccine more creatively – whether that's having mass vaccination sites or mobile vaccination sites, reaching out to communities that have less access, etc. – we're gonna need people, and that's often the bottleneck that we face, along with protective equipment, along with the availability of the vaccine itself, along with the cold chain custody, and all of the rest of it."

Sarbanes concluded: "[Let's discuss] the workforce part of this crisis and what we're doing in the moment to try to ramp up that capacity to handle … vaccine distribution."

See below for a video of the Congressman's call to action.

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