WASHINGTON (AP) – The Trump administration is urging states to speed up the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to people 65 and older and others at high risk by not retaining the second dose of two-dose photos, they said. officials on Tuesday.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said “the state administration has been too narrowly focused.”
As a result, he said, the Trump administration is now asking states to vaccinate people over the age of 65 and those under 65 with underlying health conditions that put them at high risk. He said the vaccine production is such that the second dose of the two-shot vaccine can be released without compromising immunization for those who received the first vaccine.
“We now believe that our production is predictable enough that we can make sure that the second dose is available to people in the ongoing production,” Azar told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” So everything is now available to our states and our health care providers. ”
Each state has its own plan for who should be vaccinated, based on the recommendations of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s recommendations give first priority to health care workers and nursing home residents.
But the slow pace of vaccine launches has frustrated many Americans at a time when the number of coronavirus deaths has continued to rise. More than 376,000 people have died, according to the Johns Hopkins database.
Azar said it was time to move on to the next phase of the vaccination program and expand the group of those eligible to receive the first dose.
This also means expanding the number of places where people can be vaccinated by adding community health centers and additional pharmacies.
“We have already distributed more vaccines than health care workers and people in nursing homes,” Azar said. “We need to reach more channels of administration. We have to take him to the pharmacies, we have to take him to the community health centers. ”
He said the federal government “will deploy teams to support states that make mass vaccination efforts if they wish to do so.”
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams says hundreds of thousands of people are being vaccinated every day across the country, but the rate of inoculation needs to improve.
“We’re in a race against this virus, and we’re honestly behind it,” Adams told Fox & Friends. The good news is that 700,000 people get vaccinated every day. We will hit 1 million people and we must continue to pick up the pace. “
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to deliver a speech on Thursday, presenting his plan to accelerate vaccines to more people in the first part of his administration. His transition team has promised to release as many doses of vaccine as possible, rather than continue the Trump administration’s policy of withholding millions of doses to ensure there is enough supply to allow first-time vaccine recipients to receive a vaccine. second dose.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires a second shot about three weeks after the first vaccination. Another vaccine, the one produced by Moderna, requires a second vaccine about four weeks later. One-shot vaccines are still being tested.