Governors scramble to boost pace of vaccinations
New York’s governor threatened to fine hospitals if they don’t use their allotment of COVID-19 vaccine fast enough. His South Carolina counterpart warned health care workers they have until Jan. 15 to get a shot or move to the back of the line. California’s governor wants to use dentists to vaccinate people.
With frustration rising over the rollout of the vaccine, state leaders and other politicians around the U.S. are turning up the pressure, improvising and seeking to bend the rules to get shots in arms more quickly.
Meanwhile, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday that the government will allow more drugstores to start giving vaccinations to speed up the process. If health workers aren’t lining up fast enough, he said, it is OK to expand eligibility to lower-priority groups.
“We need to not be overly prescriptive in that, especially as we see governors who are leaving vaccines sitting in freezers rather than getting it out into people’s arms,” he
said.
As of Wednesday, more than three weeks into the U.S. vaccination campaign, 5.3 million people had gotten their first shot out of the 17 million doses distributed so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. has an estimated 21 million health care workers and 3 million residents of nursing homes and other long-term care centers. The CDC said about 512,000 people in such centers have been vaccinated through a partnership between the government and the CVS and Walgreens drugstore chains.
Government officials over the past few days reported that the number of people receiving shots has accelerated to about a half-million a day, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the pace could soon reach 1 million or more.
Azar announced that in addition to the nursing home program, pharmacies from 19 chains will be allowed to help now with dispensing shots to ease pressure on hospitals. More than 40,000 drugstores will eventually be involved, he said.
The pharmacies will still have to follow state guidelines for who gets in line first.
The delays prompted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to call for eligibility to be expanded, and on Wednesday he announced a plan to provide shots to 10,000 of the city’s police officers by Sunday. But Cuomo immediately shot down that idea.