What to do when vaccine supply exceeds demand?
Some states cut back on deliveries, try to target hard-to-reach groups.
And now for a new and vexing quandary for states trying to vaccinate their residents against COVID-19: What to do when supply of the vaccine greatly outstrips demand?
Several states, long desperate for as many doses as they could get, are now awash in unused doses of COVID vaccines as demand dwindles and supply continues to ramp up. And many are having either to come up with new and creative ways to vaccinate the hard to reach and the hesitant or to start cutting back on supplies, even though 43% of Americans have not received any vaccinations.
About 112.6 million people, or 34% of the population, were fully vaccinated as of Saturday.
The slowing of demand was somewhat expected. During the initial rush of vaccine distribution over the winter and into the spring, appointments were coveted and often difficult to find. But today vaccines are more widely
available, and officials have been left to target groups that
have missed out on shots because they are too poor, isolated or hard to reach, or because they’re either skeptical of the shot or convinced they don’t want it.
Of the 329 million doses shipped by the federal government to states, about 257 million have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Several states are
sitting on surpluses, leaving officials to grapple with how best to find willing arms, and, in the meantime, telling the federal government to hold off on sending their full allotments.
While some states, including Colorado and Maryland, are still requesting their full allotments, others are cutting back on deliveries, according to The Associated Press. North Carolina reduced its deliveries by 40% last week. Connecticut asked for just 26% of its full delivery, and South Carolina requested just 21%.
At the end of last month, Arkansas asked to halt its shipment completely for at least one week, The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported.
While demand for vaccines has slowed, the outlook for the pandemic in many parts of America seems bright. Hospitalizations in Michigan, which saw a drastic spike from mid-March through midApril, have continued to fall since then. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois said last week that the state would fully reopen next month. In announcing his reopening plans, Mayor
Bill de Blasio of New York said, “This is going to be the summer of New York City.”
The federal government distributes vaccines to jurisdictions based on population, but the Biden administration confirmed last week that it planned to change allotments based on how many vaccines were ordered by each jurisdiction.
In a news conference last week, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas set a goal for vaccinating 50% of the state’s population over the next 90 days. If the state does not use the vaccines previously allocated to it by the federal government, he said, “those vaccines might go to Massachusetts, because there’s a higher acceptance rate there.”
This shift in vaccine allocations reflects a trend in many states: Fewer and fewer people are being inoculated as the weeks go on.
“It’s actually what we expected to happen,” said Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, adding that the next phase of vaccines would present “a much more challenging prospect.”
Jennifer Nuzzo, the lead public health researcher for the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative, said that, in many cases, the easiest-to-reach populations had already been vaccinated.
The remainder largely breaks down into three groups: people who want the vaccine but have not been able to get it; people who are somewhat hesitant about the vaccine or are putting off getting a shot even though they could find one; and people who are opposed to being vaccinated.