Vaccine rollout: Slow distribution causing anger, frustration.
States bemoan lack of federal distribution plan
Diane Kearns sat at her old-school wooden desk, black hair pulled into a ponytail and face devoid of makeup, and prepared to go to war.
The Austin, Texas, mother of three was fiercely focused on one thing: finding a COVID-19 vaccine for her 18-yearold son, Dean, whose disabilities include cerebral palsy, seizure disorder and legal blindness.
Kearns picked up her phone on Dec. 30 and called 15 grocery stores that had received vaccines. She called Dean's doctor. She called pharmacies.
They were out of vaccine. They served only first responders. They took only current patients. They accepted only people on waiting lists.
She kept calling, knowing she'd be on hold for a while.
“That anger drives a lot of my action,” Kearns said.
Anger and frustration are surging across the country as the federal government leaves states to handle the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Through Friday, states had received 22.1 million doses of the vaccines. Of those, about 6.7 million – less than onethird – had been administered.
The American Hospital Association has estimated 1.8 million people need to be vaccinated daily from Jan. 1 to May 31 to reach widespread immunity by the summer. The current pace is more than 1 million people per day below that.
Poor messaging and inconsistent procedures are forcing people to scramble on their own to find vaccines.
Federal officials point to a host of reasons for the lag in vaccine distribution, including vaccination systems still gearing up, federal funding that hasn't yet been disbursed to states and a requirement that states set aside vaccines for long-term care facilities.
States lament a lack of clarity on how many doses they will receive and when. They say more resources should have been devoted to education campaigns to ease concerns among people leery of getting the shots. And although the federal government recently approved $8.7 billion for the vaccine effort, it will take time to reach places that could have used the money months ago to prepare to deliver shots more efficiently.
“The recurring theme is the lack of a national strategy and the attempt to pass the buck down the line, lower and lower, until the poor people at the receiving end have nobody else that they can send the buck to,” said Gianfranco Pezzino, who was the public health officer in Shawnee County, Kansas, until retiring last month.
President-elect Joe Biden on Friday called the rollout a “travesty,” noting the lack of a national plan to get doses into arms and reiterating his commitment to administer 100 million shots in his first 100 days. His office announced a plan to release most doses right away, rather than holding second doses in reserve – the more conservative approach that's been taken by the Trump administration.
Contributing: Associated Press