(CNN) In an effort to speed up the slow US vaccine rollout, pharmacy technicians are being trained to get more Covid-19 shots into arms.
"We need more injectors, and I think all hands-on deck for a period of time is a very good idea," said Dr. William Schaffner, an adviser on vaccines to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Thursday, 30,628,175 coronavirus vaccine doses have been distributed, but only 11,148,991 of those doses have been administered, according to the CDC.
There are nearly 425,000 pharmacy techs in the US, and up until October, most states wouldn't let them administer vaccinations.
But then the Department of Health and Human Services authorized pharmacy techs to give Covid-19 vaccines.
Jenny Arnold, CEO of the Washington Pharmacists' Association, has sent training material for technicians to pharmacy associations and companies that employ pharmacists around the country. She said the technicians have been eager to sign up to learn how to give shots.
"We've had pharmacy techs from all over the country excited to help solve this pandemic," Arnold said.
It's not difficult to teach someone how to give a vaccination, said Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
"Training to do injections into the deltoid muscle -- that's the muscle in the upper arm -- is a very straightforward thing. You can train someone to do it accurately in relatively short order," he said.
He said even someone without experience in giving shots can be trained in a matter of days.
"You teach them the basics and good hand hygiene and you start them on oranges," he said, meaning trainees are taught to inject oranges before they try it out on people. "Pharmacy schools already have superb curriculum for all this, and so do nursing schools."
On Tuesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said states should "move on" from hospitals to venues like pharmacies in order to increase vaccination numbers, and that states have been given permission to start using 19 pharmacy chains and associations to administer vaccines.
Since October, CVS has hired more than 10,000 pharmacy technicians to help with the vaccine rollout. They're currently helping vaccinate residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, and later "they'll play a much larger role with the retail rollout, where we'll have the capacity to administer 20-25 million shots per month," said CVS spokesman TJ Crawford.