D.C. has not qualified for a new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program that would boost the city’s supply of doses from the federal government and stand up a vaccination site with a capacity ranging from 250 to 6,000 vaccinations a day.

Confusion swirled on Wednesday when D.C. officials told councilmembers that the city would not be participating in FEMA’s Pilot Community Vaccination Center program, which partners with localities to stand up vaccination sites ranging from mobile clinics to larger events.

Patrick Ashley, who leads D.C. Health’s emergency preparedness response, told councilmembers during their weekly call with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration that FEMA had only offered D.C. staffing and logistics assistance — help he said the city didn’t need — but no additional vaccine. “The FEMA partnership does not get us more doses,” said Ashley. “If and when that happens, we’ll re-evaluate.”

“We have plenty of vaccinators that are ready and willing … we don’t specifically need the help that they’re offering, in the format that they’re offering,” said Ashley, regarding the community vaccination center pilot.

But FEMA’s webpage says the opposite, stating that the community vaccination centers provide vaccine doses beyond a state’s regular allotment. The contradiction, and DC Health’s apparent rejection of FEMA assistance that would bring the city more doses, prompted frustration and confusion on Wednesday.

What Ashley and other health officials didn’t specify on the call is that FEMA’s pilot vaccination program doesn’t simply allow any locality to opt in — they have to first meet certain criteria. And according to DC Health, FEMA told the city it wouldn’t be eligible for the program.

“As part of FEMA’s response to the District’s request for an early vaccination center, as well as for the assistance with the vaccination of federal employees, FEMA indicated DC would not be eligible to participate in the Federal Pilot Community Vaccination Center program or eligible to receive additional doses of much needed vaccine,” wrote a DC Health spokesperson in an emailed statement.

In an email to WAMU/DCist, a spokesperson for FEMA said the agency uses input from state and local partners and data—including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index and census data—to select federally-supported community vaccination center pilot sites.

The CDC’s social vulnerability index scores census tracts from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating the least social vulnerability and 1 indicating the most. The federal government uses the scores to get a sense of which areas might need the most support during and after disasters.

According to an interactive map of the CDC’s social vulnerability index, vast swaths of the District, particularly census tracts in Wards 7 and 8, have high social vulnerability scores. Some neighborhoods were as high as .97 and .98 on the scale. The neighborhoods that rank highest on the city’s social vulnerability scale are also among the neighborhoods with the lowest rates of vaccinations: seniors of low-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods in D.C. have been vaccinated at about half the rate of seniors in whiter, wealthier areas.

A FEMA spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that D.C. is among thousands of localities that are receiving vaccines through FEMA — but the pilot community vaccination centers are only happening in areas that need extra support with underserved communities. The spokesperson did not say whether FEMA explicitly denied a request from D.C. for a community vaccination center. (It is unclear how the pilot program addresses the existence of severe health and income inequities in cities like D.C. with affluent neighborhoods.)

“It is not always the best option to request a FEMA Pilot [Community Vaccination Center],” wrote the spokesperson. “Thousands upon thousands of communities are receiving vaccines through FEMA funding, just like Washington DC. The relatively small number of FEMA Pilot sites are being positioned where necessary to provide greater equity to underserved populations where the city or state need the added staffing and support.”

And, the FEMA spokesperson added, vaccine supply in D.C. and across the country is significantly increasing, regardless of whether the District is a participant in the community vaccination center pilot program.

“The context of site labels is less important than the distribution of vaccines,” the spokesperson wrote. “Washington DC, along with the rest of the nation, has a tremendously higher amount of vaccines available to them than they did a month ago.”

D.C. has received at least $2.3 million in funding from FEMA to cover costs associated with vaccine distribution, including the costs of storage, staffing, and public communication.

On Wednesday, D.C. announced that three CVS locations in the city would begin administering vaccines to teachers, childcare workers, healthcare workers, and residents ages 65 and older through a federal pharmacy partnership. While these doses will be available to individuals who pre-register through the city’s portal, the more than 3,000 doses expected for the pharmacy partnership this week come in addition to the supply already allotted for the city’s online registration system.

D.C. also receives extra doses from the federal government because federally qualified health centers, which serve a largely Black and Latino patient population, have been administering the vaccine in the District.

But the federal government has rejected other requests from regional leaders for more vaccine doses.

In early February, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan requested that FEMA take on the responsibility of providing vaccines to the region’s large essential federal workforce—but later that month, officials said they expected FEMA to deny the request.

Overall, DC Health data show that 7.6% of D.C. residents have been fully vaccinated, and 16.4% of residents have been partially or fully vaccinated, but the city has also been vaccinating thousands of out-of-state residents who work in the city.

Discrepancies in federal and local reporting have also clouded D.C.’s data, and frustrated DC Health officials and councilmembers. While D.C. ranks in the bottom nationally for its percentage of doses administered out of doses delivered, national trackers include doses sent to federal entities in D.C. — allotments that DC Health does not oversee or administer, and are often not publicly reported.

Dr. Ankoor Shah, who leads D.C.’s vaccination program, told councilmembers on Wednesday that he had met with CDC officials to address the data issues. According to Shah, CDC officials provided a number of doses delivered to federal entities that fell 40,000 short of the number of delivered doses recorded on the CDC’s tracker, underscoring the complexities and federal complications of D.C.’s vaccination progress.

Shah also said on the Wednesday call that DC Health was “opting into any opportunity where we can have more [vaccine] supply come in.” Shah pointed to federal partnerships with community health centers and pharmacies in the District, and said that D.C.’s participation in both of those programs had brought the city more doses.

He also recognized the city’s large-capacity vaccination centers at the Entertainment and Sports Arena and Walter E. Washington Convention Center sites, arguing that it isn’t more vaccinators D.C. needs from FEMA, but more doses.

“We’ve been running a high capacity site at the Convention Center, a high capacity site at the Entertainment and Sports Arena, as well as Providence [Health Systems],” Shah said during the Council call, adding that the city plans to expand into more high-capacity sites as supply becomes available. “To be very candid, we don’t need FEMA running these sites, we actually just need more vaccines.”

The FEMA spokesperson, for one, indicated that the agency has clearly received this message.

“All indications from Washington DC is that they seek more vaccines,” the spokesperson wrote. “They are coming. We have leadership deployed to DC who are in constant dialogue on how best to work together to meet the needs of the communities.”