• Anger in states over pace of COVID-19 vaccine allotments

Uncertainty over the pace of federal COVID-19 vaccine allotments triggered anger and confusion Friday in some states, with officials worried that the shipments they expected won’t be coming through.

The developments threatened to escalate tensions between the Trump administration and some states over who is responsible for the relatively slow start to the vaccination campaign against the scourge that has killed over 390,000 Americans.

Among the most outspoken state officials was Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. She said Oregon’s efforts to increase vaccinations have been thrown in disarray because of “deception on a national scale” by the administration.

Via Twitter, Brown said she was told by Gen. Gustave F. Perna, who leads the federal vaccine effort Operation Warp Speed, that states will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week “because there is no federal reserve of doses.”

Alena Yarmosky, a spokeswoman for Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, said governors were “told explicitly” on Tuesday that they would be provided additional doses. Northam, a Democrat and a doctor, had moved quickly as a result to announce that the state would expand vaccine eligibility.

Now, Northam’s administration is trying to determine whether those additional supplies don’t exist, Yarmosky said.

“What we’re seeing is fully in line with the dysfunction that has characterized the Trump administration’s entire response to COVID-19. President-elect Biden cannot be sworn in fast enough,” she said.

In California, a spokesman for the state medical association, Anthony York, said reports of the federal vaccine stockpile being depleted were “a grave disappointment.”