NC Gov. Cooper: We Want Vaccine Recipients to ‘Look Like North Carolina’s Population’

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) stated that he wants to get vaccines into arms quickly, “But we’re also holding our providers accountable that we want those arms to look like North Carolina’s population.”

Cooper stated that during the early part of the vaccine rollout, “we did not hit enough of our people of color in underserved communities. And that’s why, in North Carolina, we created our own database to have 100% of the vaccinations, we will know who those vaccinations go to. Our goal is to get those vaccinations off the shelves and into arms, but we also want those arms to reflect the makeup of our population, making sure that we get our vaccines to black North Carolinians, to Hispanic North Carolinians, and we want to make sure that we do that, and we’re getting help from the feds now, and that has been critical.”

He later added, “Every single day I’m working on vaccine distribution in North Carolina. It’s not simple, though, when you have millions of people who need it, but not enough vaccines for all of them. So, then you’ve got to decide how to distribute it. Our motto is fast and fair. We want those vaccines off the shelves and into arms before the next shipment comes. But we’re also holding our providers accountable that we want those arms to look like North Carolina’s population. And that’s not as easy as it sounds. Because we want to be fair about this, but the most important thing we need to do is to make sure that we get those vaccines in arms and we want more and more. So delighted that 80,000 doses of J&J vaccine, with the one shot, coming to North Carolina. We’re going to get those out there quickly, and, hopefully, get a lot of uptake on that, as well.”

Cooper further stated, “So, first, we targeted our 65-and-over population.”

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