Moderna vaccine shipments set to arrive in states on Monday

WASHINGTON » Shipments of the second coronavirus vaccine approved by health regulators are set to arrive in states Monday, according to the Trump administration’s vaccine operations chief, one week after front-line health workers received the first shots in the U.S. government’s mass vaccination campaign.

Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said Saturday that distribution was already underway for the vaccine developed by Massachusetts biotechnology company Moderna in partnership with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, following the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to clear the shot late Friday.

Workers were packing the vials into boxes at distribution centers

run by the medical wholesale giant McKesson, Perna said. FedEx and UPS trucks are slated to depart Sunday and carry the freezer-temperature containers to their destinations. The government has also begun shipping ancillary kits including needles, syringes and other supplies to help administer the shots, according to Perna.

Later on Saturday, an independent vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to recommend Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine for use in people ages 18 and older, paving the way for inoculations to begin as shipments arrive. The move follows Friday’s authorization from the FDA, which permitted the vaccine to be administered; an endorsement by the CDC immunization panel signals that the vaccine should be administered to the populations included in its guidance.

The rollout of the Moderna vaccine caps a week marked by a mix of high hopes and frustration surrounding the administration’s handling of the first coronavirus vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and cleared by the FDA on Dec. 12.

Days after doctors, nurses and other Americans received the first injections, officials in multiple states said they were alerted that their second round of shipments had been drastically cut, creating widespread confusion and raising concerns about whether health departments would receive enough doses to meet the administration’s timelines.

Speaking in a Saturday morning news conference, Perna said he took personal responsibility for the error, saying he misunderstood a step in the process that prevents the government from releasing vaccine doses as soon as the manufacturer makes them available. As a result, he said, his forecasts were incorrect and he had to lower the vaccine allocations.

“To the governors to the governors’ staffs, please accept my personal apology if this was disruptive in your decision-making,” Perna said.

Asked to explain the issue in plain terms, Perna declined to elaborate. He called the situation a “miscommunication” and a “planning problem,” not a problem with either of the vaccines themselves.

He added that the administration was on track to allocate “around 20 million doses” of the vaccines by the end of December, but said distribution could extend into early January. The characterization appeared to mark a departure from the administration’s goal of administering 20 million shots by the end of the year.

“We are pushing out millions of doses of vaccines right now, and each week those numbers will continue to grow,” Perna said.

So far, 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been delivered across all 50 states. Between the two vaccines, 7.9 million doses were allocated and ready for distribution this week, according to Perna.

As of Saturday morning, 272,001 doses of the Pfizer vaccine had been administered, according to the CDC.

The approval of Moderna’s vaccine marks a crucial expansion of the government’s vaccination efforts, freeing the country from having to rely on a vaccine from one manufacturer as officials try to meet ambitious goals for getting doses out the door.

One benefit of the vaccine is that it can be stored at the temperature of a normal freezer, making it easier to transport. Pfizer’s vaccine, by contrast, needs ultra-lowtemperature freezers regularly refreshed with dry ice.

Perna said workers were packing containers with 100 vials each, a relatively small number that also eases transportation. “This allows jurisdictions ways to reach small and hard-toreach rural areas,” he said Saturday.

As the first waves of vaccines have reached hospitals and health departments nationwide, local disputes have arisen over who should get the shots first, bringing the logistical challenges of inoculating millions of people into sharp relief at a time when infections and deaths have reached record levels.

In California, where many intensive care units are overwhelmed with patients, nearly all young front-line doctors at Stanford Medical Center were excluded from the initial round of coronavirus vaccinations, prompting outcry from workers who said such workers should be prioritized.

Dozens of the hospital’s residents and fellows staged a raucous protest on the Palo Alto campus Friday, accusing the university of selecting orthopedists, dermatologists and even some faculty who work from home for vaccination before workers who spend long hours treating covid-19 patients.

Stanford officials apologized for the issue, saying a faulty vaccine algorithm left out early-year doctors and promising an immediate fix. “We take complete responsibility for the errors in the execution of our vaccine distribution plan,” Stanford Medicine said in a statement.

Christine Santiago, a 29-year-old resident in internal medicine who treated covid-19 patients during night shifts in the ICU, told The Washington Post that resident physicians “occupy a very unprotected space in the United States.”

“We’re not fully employees of the workforce,” said Santiago, who said she is home quarantining and waiting on a coronavirus test after using a faulty batch of N95 masks. “We fall in this vague, unclear position.”

Nationwide, coronavirus infections continued to surge, with the sevenday average for new daily cases rising 3.1% over the past week, according to data tracked by The Post. The weekly average for daily deaths rose 6.1%, with 2,878 coronavirus fatalities reported Friday. Hospitalizations also climbed more than 6% nationwide.

California reported a record 379 deaths on Thursday, followed by a near-record of 300 on Friday and 279 as of Saturday afternoon. Infections in the state have topped 40,000 for four consecutive days, with at least 43,600 reported Saturday, according to The Post’s tracking.