US shifts to speed COVID vaccine shot deliveries
WAS IN TON The Trump administration shifted gears Tuesday to speed the delivery of shots to more people. The move came as cases and deaths surged to alarming new highs.
ealth and uman Services Secretary Alex Azar announced a series of major changes to increase supply of vaccines, extend eligibility to more seniors and provide more locations for people to get shots. Administration officials describing the new policies conveyed a notable sense of urgency.
One change will have some teeth to it. Azar said going forward the federal government will base each state’s allocation of vaccines partly on how successful states have been in administering those already provided.
“If you are not using vaccines that you have the right to, then we should be rebalancing to states that are using that vaccine,” Azar said at news conference.
That won’t happen overnight, not until officials try to sort out whether lags in reporting could be the reason for what appears to be subpar performance. Currently, the government allocates vaccines based on state population.
Azar also said the government will stop holding back the reTuired second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and 0oderna vaccines, practically doubling supply. Both those shots reTuire two doses to achieve optimum protection.
Additionally, Washington is urging states to immediately start vaccinating other groups lower down the priority scale, including people age and older and younger people with certain health problems.
“This next phase reflects the urgency of the situation,” said Azar. “Every vaccine dose sitting in a warehouse rather than going into an arm could mean one more death that could have been avoided.”
Initially the government had been holding back second doses as a safety precaution against potential shortfalls in production. Now, officials say they are confident the needed supply will be there. And people needing a second dose will have priority.
“This is not a supply issue at this moment in time,” Vice President 0ike Pence told governors on a White ouse call. A recording was provided to The Associated Press.
Azar also gave states the green light to designate more places where people can get shots. Those locations can include tens of thousands of pharmacies, federally supported community health centers that serve low-income communities, and mass vaccination sites already being set up in some states.
As of 0onday morning, the government had distributed about . million doses to states, U.S. territories and major cities. But only about 9. million people had received their first shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s online tracker. That means only about of the available vaccines had been administered.
Initially, the shots were going to health care workers and nursing home residents. Those and older were next in line. But problems arose even in vaccinating that limited pool of people. Some hospital and nursing home workers have declined to get the vaccine. Scheduling issues created delays in getting shots to nursing homes.
Some states, including Arizona, have or are planning to open up mass vaccination centers, aiming to inoculate thousands of people a day in a single location. In )lorida, ov. Ron DeSantis opened up vaccinations to people and older. In other states, local health authorities have started asking residents and older to register, in anticipation the vaccination campaign would be expanded.
On Tuesday, Azar said some states are being “overly prescriptive and trying to micromanage every single dose of vaccine,” leading to bottlenecks.
Azar also criticized what he called “the hospitalization of vaccine distribution,” saying “we have too much vaccine sitting in freezers in hospitals.”
The Trump administration directed a crash effort to develop, manufacture and deliver vaccines, hoping to avoid a repeat of earlier debacles with coronavirus testing. Dubbed “Operation Warp Speed,” it has produced two highly effective vaccines, with more on the way.
The slow pace of the vaccine rollout has frustrated many Americans at a time when the coronavirus death toll has continued to rise. 0ore than ,000 people in the U.S. have died, according to the -ohns opkins database.
Azar said the pace of vaccinations has picked up, on track to reach 1 million daily within a couple of weeks. But the American ospital Association estimates 1. million vaccinations a day are needed, seven days a week, to achieve widespread immunity by the middle of this year. Biden has set a goal of 100 million shots administered in his first 100 days.
etting more groups in line “all of a sudden makes a lot more people potentially eligible and certainly interested and we need to have the systems in place to get them the vaccine,” Casalotti added.
But administration officials pressed their case urgently.
“We think right now getting the vaccine into (more) individuals, now, could really make a huge difference in the hospitalizations that you would see in your jurisdictions say four to six weeks from now,” CDC Director Robert Redfield told governors on the call, adding it was his strong recommendation.