By Ellie Kaufman, Annie Grayer, Sara Murray and Andrea Kane | CNN
As the coronavirus pandemic continued to grow throughout the summer and fall, federal government officials repeatedly offered a ray of hope: enough doses of vaccine to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of December.
But after the first week of vaccine distribution and only nine days left to meet its self-imposed deadline, Operation Warp Speed is on track to remain well over 20 million gunshots.
A number from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that about 11.4 million doses have been distributed since Monday morning and about 2.1 million have been administered – not even close to the established Warp Speed target. initial.
Officials at US Health and Human Services and the CDC say state agencies are less vaccinated because of data delays, but even to report the delays, the U.S. vaccination program appears to take longer than Warp Speed officials have predicted.
An early hurdle: a two-day requirement by the US Food and Drug Administration to evaluate each shipment of vaccine for quality control has slowed distribution. OWS told states to expect fewer doses for the second week than originally planned. The number of 20 million seems far from being reached, OWS officials acknowledged last Monday that it may not reach January.
“We still feel strongly that we will allocate to the states by the end of the year 20 million doses of vaccine that will be available,” General Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said during the December 21 call. “We are confident that we will distribute the final part of the vaccine no later than the first week of January so that everyone has access.”
An HHS official said nearly 16 million doses had already been allocated for states and jurisdictions to dispose of. But as more doses of the vaccine become available, both Operation Warp Speed and the state and health care partners receiving the vaccine will also need to be able to expand the complicated distribution and logistics needed to get the vaccines from point A to point B.
“It seems that reaching 20 million by the beginning of the year is ambitious,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
However, “people seem to be very encouraged about the evolution of vaccinations,” Plescia added. “Everyone seems to feel that they are using the source they have.”
Imperfect data
The vaccination effort is almost certainly moving faster than the low number of CDC data. In addition to launching new vaccination programs, states are also struggling with new vaccination reporting tools, causing data delays. The latest numbers also do not include most of the larger vaccination efforts that start just this week in long-term care institutions.
CDC distribution data has just begun to include the Moderna vaccine, which was being carried out in more than 3,500 locations. While the CDC plans to update data on a regular basis, daily updates should not begin until 2021. Some states, such as Michigan, report their own data, but statewide reporting is also delayed.
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Public Information Officer Lynn Sutfin pointed out that the state dashboard is not updated in real time, and providers have up to 24 hours to load the doses administered into the vaccine registry.
Michael Pratt, chief communications officer for Operation Warp Speed, praised the federal government’s progress so far.
“These doses are distributed to states to the American people, as soon as they are available and available, as well as the rapid availability and distribution of so many doses – with 20 million doses expected to be allocated for distribution just 18 days after the first vaccine. He was granted an emergency use permit – a testament to the success of Operation Warp Speed, “Pratt said in a statement to CNN.
“I haven’t started yet”
In addition to states recalibrating into the reality that they will receive fewer doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine than was initially promised in the next few weeks, they are juggling how to ensure that every dose they receive is delivered on time. useful.
While vaccines have been sent to each state, vaccinations are just beginning in some areas. Dayton, Ohio Mayor Nan Whaley told CNN last Tuesday that her city has not yet started administering vaccines, although vaccinations began in Ohio on December 14th.
“So far, we haven’t started distributing the vaccine in Dayton,” Whaley said Tuesday, adding that Christmas Eve will be the first day anyone in Dayton receives the vaccine.
“We are not a big city that gets these assets quickly. We talked about this, about how testing has been very slow in communities like Dayton and across the country, and I am concerned that the distribution of the vaccine will be slow as well, ”she added.
Although all states have data on the number of people vaccinated, only 23 states have released this information, according to a survey by Johns Hopkins University.
The CDC and state numbers are not a real-time reflection of field vaccinations, but raise questions about how states ensure their full supply is used effectively. The gap between the doses received and the doses administered begins to become even more discouraging when one considers that each condition is scheduled to receive several doses from Pfizer and the first round doses from Moderna last week; In many cases, first week dose delivery has not yet been fully administered.
In Michigan, the December 28 Covid-19 vaccine scoreboard shows that only 37,660 doses of the vaccine were given out of the 231,075 doses sent to the state. Sutfin said the delay in deliveries and the delay in data updates explain the discrepancy.
While Michigan received over 84,000 doses last week, not all were received on the same day. The vaccine is delivered daily to local hospitals and health departments across the state. As I understand more about the operations and flow of the clinic, we expect the time from receipt to administration to decrease, “Sutfin told CNN.
Sutfin also stressed that the process of unpacking, inventorying, thawing and coordinating each dose of vaccine “takes some time, so it is expected that at any time there will be a difference between the vaccine received and the doses administered.”
In Florida since Monday morning, 118,764 people have received the Covid-19 vaccine. The state initially received 179,400 doses from Pfizer.
Florida Hospital Association president and CEO Mary Mayhew told CNN that reconfiguring the clinic space in a socially distant way and allocating staff to administer the vaccine explains why the initial number of people vaccinated does not match the available vaccine supply.
“I am confident that hospitals are using critical resources effectively and efficiently to support the urgent administration of vaccines to front-line medical staff,” Mayhew said when asked if she was concerned about the discrepancy. Hospitals work with other community health care partners to support the timely distribution of vaccines.
Even though states oversee the vaccine distribution process, many state health departments or governors’ offices have allowed the effective administration of the vaccine to the specific hospital, long-term care unit, or pharmacy scheduled to receive transportation. This decentralized structure could cause some learning delays where there are weaknesses in this process.
Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi health officer, told a news conference Tuesday that it was not the state’s job to make sure vaccines actually got into people’s arms once they were allocated to long-term care facilities.
“They haven’t started vaccination,” Dobbs said of long-term care facilities, “but we’ve released enough allocation for them to start so they’re in the process of being set up.” And you know, this is something that gets us out of control. But you know, in the next two weeks they’ll have that role. “
“It’s a little frustrating”
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, said he was not surprised by some of the initial problems with the vaccine launch.
“It’s a little frustrating, because I didn’t know the vaccines were coming,” Kate Bolduan told CNN on Monday.
“It’s going to go a little slower – again, better planning would have moved us faster, but here we are and get these vaccines out as quickly as possible, to the right people,” he said.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, is more optimistic about the launch, saying so far it has gone “reasonably well.” He hopes the new Biden administration is thinking about how to get accurate figures to states to set Americans’ expectations of when life can return to normal.
“It’s not in our best interest to have these multiple estimates as to when it reaches the rest of the population, because I don’t think you can do good planning that way,” Benjamin told CNN. “I hope that the new administration sits down and thinks about messaging, so that people do not raise their hopes to get vaccinated.”
That being said, the vaccines were developed in record time, without the “normal bureaucratic pace,” Benjamin said. He believes that this process has given Americans a new exposure to what the vaccine development process is like.
“The American public has a good understanding of the vaccination process that they haven’t had before, and I think people should pay a lot of attention to that, when people talk about what public health does, that’s an example.” , said Benjamin.