Vaccine delivery is off to slow start
If the pace of COVID-19 vaccine delivery into people's arms stays the way it has been for the past few weeks, it could take years rather than months to vaccinate Americans, and the outbreak will continue to dominate lives.
Federal officials overestimated the speed at which vaccines could be given, making delivery a disappointment in an otherwise successful development effort.
Doses have been behind the government's schedule – 15 million, instead of the 20 million doses promised to be delivered by the end of 2020. About 70% of those doses are on pharmacy shelves, according to government data, and only about 14% of doses destined for nursing home residents and caregivers have been injected.
Although vaccination is off to a rough start, it's not too late to turn the situation around, according to experts such as Kelly Moore, deputy director of the Immunization Action Coalition, an education and advocacy group.
To do so will require a host of improvements, including more money, additional staffing and greater experience with vaccines shown to be safe and effective but not so easy to use.
About 200,000 doses are being given a day. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the U.S. should soon be able to deliver 1 million a day.
“There were a lot of aspirational goals set by federal officials about how many vaccines could be delivered how quickly,” Moore said.
Chicago has delivered 95% of the vaccine it's received, but at the current rate of delivery, it would take a year to a year and a half to vaccinate residents, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday.
“That is unacceptable,” she said. “The federal government must absolutely, 100% step up.”
Operation Warp Speed, the federal program tasked with developing and delivering COVID-19 vaccines, promised to vaccinate 20 million Americans in December.
Three weeks after shipping began, the program has distributed 15 million doses to hospitals and nursing home providers, but only 4.5 million people have gotten the first of the two-shot regimen. That means 30% of available doses have been used.
Among nursing home residents and caregivers, 365,000 shots have been delivered out of more than 2.5 million distributed – a 14% usage rate.
The numbers may be somewhat better than they appear because of a lag in reporting, but there's no question that fewer shots are being given than was planned or expected.
Federal officials have focused on getting the vaccine onto hospital shelves, but to get them off the shelves requires “an enormous human element,” Moore said.