Fewer Pfizer doses coming than expected

‘Miscommunication’ may push state timeline back a week or more

Gov. Ned Lamont on Thursday announced that Connecticut will receive fewer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine than originally anticipated, a problem that is afflicting states across the country.

The state’s chief operating officer, Josh Geballe, said the issue “seems to be a result of some miscommunication between Operation WarpSpeed and Pfizer.”

The state received all of its expected 31,600 doses this week, Geballe said, but the shortfall will begin next week. Next week, the state originally estimated that it would receive 98,000 doses of both the already-authorized Pfizer vaccine and the expected-to-be authorized Moderna vaccine. Geballe said Thursday that the state now expected to receive 86,000 doses next week.

That shortfall would have been more severe except for one additional change — some vials of the Pfizer vaccine contain more than the expected five doses. But overall, the problem will still leave Connecticut with 12,000 fewer doses next week than it expected.

Geballe said the drop in doses

will have an affect on the state’s vaccination timeline. Connecticut originally aimed to vaccinate all health care workers and nursing home residents by the end of January.

“It may push the timelines back a week or so,” Geballe said.

Geballe said that at this point it’s unclear whether the Pfizer doses will represent a permanent loss of doses to the state, or whether they’ll be made up down the line. Geballe said it does appear that the Pfizer vaccine could be coming in at a “lower run-rate” than initially anticipated.

But Lamont added that the vaccination rollout is, overall, still going smoothly.

“There are 100 moving parts in terms of getting these vaccines out,” Lamont said. “But I think so far, so good.”

Hospitalizations flat; cases, deaths still elevated

The vaccine shortfall news came as the governor announced a continued elevated positivity rate and death count.

The state on Thursday reported 2,321 newly identified coronavirus cases, out of a total of 35,948 tests administered, for a daily positivity rate of about 6.5%.

That rate has held approximately steady over the past few days, and is significantly higher than last summer, when positivity was under 1%.

Also on Thursday, the state reported 46 additional coronavirus-related deaths, for a total of 532 deaths so far in December. With two weeks still left in December, Connecticut has already reported more deaths this month than in October and November combined.

Unlike the positivity rate and death count, coronavirus hospitalizations on Thursday dropped for the second day in a row. The state reported 49 fewer hospitalizations, for a total of 1,205 people currently hospitalized with COVID19 in Connecticut.

While cases continue to rise, Connecticut’s hospitalizations have fluctuated over the past weeks, jumping significantly some days and dropping on other days. But on average, the state’s hospitalizations have remained approximately flat over the past two weeks, hovering in the range of 1,180 to 1,260.

Nationwide, there have been more than 17 million coronavirus cases and a total of 309,334 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

Second vaccine recommended for FDA approval

An advisory group for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday discussed the second coronavirus vaccine, this one developed by Moderna. On Thursday evening, the committee recommended that the FDA authorize the vaccine for use, just as the committee did last Thursday for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

If the FDA authorizes the Moderna vaccine — which it is expected to do on Friday — then states could begin receiving doses of the vaccine as early as Monday. Across the country, states including Connecticut expect to receive weekly installments of both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The two vaccines would be distributed similarly, meaning that initial doses would go to health care workers and nursing home residents.

There are differences between the two vaccines — for instance, the Pfizer vaccine has a 21-day waiting period between its two doses while the Moderna vaccine has a 28-day waiting period. Because the vaccines are not exactly the same, a patient who receives a first dose of the vaccine must receive a second dose of the same vaccine in order for the vaccination to be effective.

Connecticut’s vaccination timeline, which aims to vaccinate all health care workers and nursing home residents by the end of January, was crafted with the assumption that the Moderna vaccine would be authorized for use. That means that the authorization of the Moderna vaccine would confirm the state’s estimated timeline, not hasten it.