Californians paying price for chaotic rollout of coronavirus vaccine, experts say
LOS ANGELES – As roughly 4,000 Americans die each day from COVID-19, public health and medical experts are aghast that the vaccines that could save them remain beyond reach — due to multiple governmental failures involving planning, coordination and public communication.
"Many people are eager to get the vaccine, and they want to know when and where they are going to get it," said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "For the most part, people at the local level don't know, and people at the state level are still trying to figure it out."
Calls to doctor offices and pharmacies about vaccines yield no answers, leaving people frustrated and anxious. Emails from doctors' offices lack specifics. County public health websites may offer the best information, and people in some places can use them to sign up for vaccinations.
Some experts said the situation should vastly improve within a couple of weeks, but for now, most people who want to know more about being vaccinated may just have to wait.
"Almost almost every practical question I ask anybody, the answer I get is a shrug of the shoulders," said Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco. "It is not good. It just feels like the plans have been made without any attention to the practicalities of the last mile."
The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines starts at the top, with President Trump. His Health and Human Resources Secretary, Alex Azar, promised on Dec. 10 that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated within several weeks. As of Monday, only 9 million had been vaccinated, according to the CDC, and administration officials have acknowledged a "planning error" for the unavailability of doses.
On the state level, vaccine distribution is being at least partially slowed by technical problems with a software program used by California, as The Times reported Friday, citing state and local officials. Another problem is the vast number of healthcare providers across the state and nation, including pharmacy chains, slow to prepare communication plans to notify nearby eligible people that they can come in and quickly get vaccinated.
A Los Angeles writer, 67, said that she called her doctor's office in Pasadena and her local pharmacy on Tuesday after hearing that Gov. Gavin Newsom had promised to speed up vaccinations.
Her doctor's office "said they have gotten no instructions about dispensing the vaccine," said the resident, who asked that her name not be used because she didn't want others to know of her anxiety. Her local Walgreens also said "they hadn't heard anything yet." She said she also signed up at the county to be notified about vaccines, but has not yet received any emails.
"Really stunning," she said, about the lack of information.
Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert, said he gets emails from people he doesn't know asking him when they will be informed about how to get the vaccine.
"We have done a miracle thing in developing these vaccines," Swartzberg said, "but it is ironic that things we know how to do and can do [vaccinations] we just are not doing."
Lack of adequate funding for the vaccine rollout has left states about two months behind in planning, he said. Health economists projected the states would need $8.4 billion for the vaccination campaign, but until recently were given only $400 million, he said.
"The money should have come two months ago," he said. "We don't have time. Every month we lose between 2,500 and 3,000 people a day [to COVID-19]."