With Californians growing desperate to protect themselves from COVID-19 and put the pandemic behind them, many want to know: where are their vaccines? State officials have mostly pointed to insufficient federal supply as the culprit for a slower than expected vaccine rollout.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, struggling to salvage a once-bright political future dimmed by his mishandling of the covid crisis, tapped nonprofit health insurer Blue Shield of California last week to allocate the state’s covid vaccine.

Insurer groups are praising President Joe Biden’s move to create a three-month special enrollment period despite concerns about the potential for adverse selection. The support means insurers likely believe they could get a large enough pool of new sign-ups to mitigate any changes to the risk pool, several experts said.

Covered California says it will give people more time to purchase health insurance this year. Open enrollment for the state's health insurance marketplace ends Sunday. But on Thursday, the agency that runs the marketplace said it would launch a special enrollment period next Monday that will run through May 15.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday it will begin direct shipments of coronavirus vaccines to retail pharmacies next week, expanding points of access for Americans to receive shots as concerns about variants of the virus expand.

Late last month, before President Joe Biden took office and proposed his pandemic relief plan, Congress passed a nearly 5,600-page legislative package that provided some pandemic relief along with its more general allocations to fund the government in 2021.