States rewrite rules to get COVID-19 vaccines moving
U.S. states are improvising new delivery systems and rewriting priorities as COVID-19 vaccinations are off to a tortoise-paced start.
Colorado on Wednesday said it would vaccinate people 70 and older, joining Texas and Florida in trying to quickly immunize older residents — even though federal guidelines favor health-care workers. Other cities and states are just now registering recipients, weeks after the Trump administration made clear it considered its job done after the vaccines were delivered to hospitals and agencies.
The task of delivering shots that could end a pandemic that has killed 340,000 U.S. residents so far is taxing a largely private medical system designed to maximize profit rather than deliver public health. Governments and institutions are struggling with complex logistics to keep the shots cold, organizing cohorts of people to receive them and persuading those made skeptical by a flood of online disinformation.
West Virginia finished giving the first of two required shots to residents and employees of longterm care facilities, the first state to do so, Gov. Jim Justice said during a briefing Wednesday. The state is now vaccinating prison guards and emergency workers, and then will target teachers and residents 80 and older, Justice said.
“Take the vaccine, for crying out loud,” Justice said. “People say you are going to grow a third arm, you’re going to grow antlers. I mean, give me a break.”
U.S. officials have shipped more than 14 million COVID-19 shots, Army General Gustave Perna, who oversees distribution, said Wednesday. So far, only 2.6 million have made it into arms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fewer shots have been administered than what the Trump administration had hoped for, Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program, told reporters Wednesday. The current total is well below the administration’s goal of 20 million vaccinations by year end, a number already scaled back.
President-elect Joe Biden has said the administration is failing to protect Americans and has promised 100 million inoculations in his first 100 days if Congress provides funding.
Some of the apparent slowness is due to a lag in data, which can take three to four days to see, Slaoui and Perna said. Perna also blamed snowstorms and providers learning how to handle the vaccines.
Christy Gray, director of the immunization division for the Virginia Department of Health, said she believed far more people have received the dose than state data suggests, and that providers administering the vaccinations have been slow about reporting it.
Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, attributed the slow rollout to public health departments being strained by the pandemic, launching a massive inoculation campaign amid the holiday season and the COVID-19 vaccines having special handling and storage requirements.
The formula created by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE needs to be stored at 94 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That makes the logistics more complicated than other vaccines like the flu shot, said Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director of the Minnesota Department of Health.
“This is a new vaccine with new processes that have to be put in place, and that adds some time to the process,” Ehresmann said Wednesday in a press conference.
The federal officials said they will assess what’s working and what needs to be adjusted.