A group of lawmakers in the House are asking the federal government to be in charge of distributing COVID-19 vaccinations to federal employees in the Washington, DC area.
The lawmakers sent a letter last week to the Office of Personnel Management and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that the government should “federalize its response to vaccinating its employees with a direct allocation.”
The letter was sent by Reps. Don Beyer (D-VA), Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA), Anthony Brown (D-MD), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jennifer Wexton (D-VA), David Trone (D-MD), and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).
The letter echoes the request made by local DC government officials who sought to have FEMA and HHS take over the vaccination process for federal employees in the region. The officials said in their letter making the request that they cannot handle vaccinating local federal employees on top of all of the other residents. The House lawmakers concurred in their letter saying that “the federal government acknowledges when it puts an undue burden on a State or locality.”
A copy of the House letter is included below.
Letter to OPM, CDC Re: Federalizing Federal Employee Vaccinations
