U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Friday announced that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the country.

The pandemic has killed more than 458,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved a request for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to boost vaccination efforts, Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House's coronavirus response team, told a news conference on Friday.

Part of the first contingent of more than 1,000 troops will arrive in vaccination centers opening in California over the next 10 days and begin operations around February 15, Slavitt added.

The Pentagon said the 1,110 troops would be broken down into five teams, each with vaccinators, nurses and clinical staff.

Biden has called for the setting up of 100 mass vaccination centers around the country within a month. His national vaccination campaign aims to administer 100 million doses of two-stage coronavirus vaccines in his first 100 days.

Using the military to fight the coronavirus is not new. At its peak under former President Donald Trump, more than 47,000 National Guard troops were supporting COVID-19 operations and about 20,000 continue to help.

The spreading of multiple new coronavirus strains in the country has increased the urgency for the U.S. to accelerate the pace of vaccinations.

A total of 546 infection cases of coronavirus variants had been reported in at least 33 U.S. states as of Tuesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The U.S. has distributed about 57.4 million vaccine doses, but only about 35.2 million have been administered as of Thursday morning, according to data compiled by the CDC.

The country has recorded more than 26.7 million COVID-19 cases as of Friday afternoon, showed a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

(With input from Xinhua, Reuters)