STATEWIDE — The week is here: A new federal effort to ramp up coronavirus vaccinations in retail pharmacies around the country is about to start.

The White House is aiming to get vaccines to more than 40,000 pharmacies nationwide.

This means that 21 national pharmacies and the federal government are partnering to get more shots in arms, as a new, more contagious strand of COVID-19 — U.K. variant — is now in the U.S. and in Central Florida and Tampa areas.

This week, 1 million Moderna COVID-19 vaccines will be sent out to pharmacies nationwide, including Publix, Southeastern Grocers, which is the parent company of Winn-Dixie, and Walmart in Florida.

Winn-Dixie updated its website Tuesday with the locations where it will provide vaccinations. As of Tuesday afternoon, it showed Central Floida stores in Silver Springs, Leesburg, The Villages,  Edgewater, Ormond Beach, and Palm Bay.  

President Joe Biden's administration said the vaccinations will begin on Thursday, Feb. 11.

Pharmacies will need to follow state-level requirements on who should be vaccinated. Exact pharmacy locations in Florida have not yet been released.

"What we've done is we've been distributing vaccines as quickly as possible and we've increased two periods in a row the amount of vaccines that states are getting," Andy Slavitt with the White House COVID-19 Response Team said.

The Biden administration is also increasing the weekly allocation of vaccines sent to states for various sites by 500,000.

This pharmacy program does not have any impact on current state operations and the vaccines are going directly from the federal government to specific pharmacies.

The Biden administration said this is phase one, and more vaccines will be sent out as more become available.

It is currently unknown which pharmacies in Florida are getting the vaccines.