Along with other states, Colorado will receive fewer doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine than expected, which Governor Jared Polis blamed on the federal government’s inability to deliver available supplies.
The state had expected to receive 67,860 doses next week, but now expects only 39,780 doses, Polis told a news conference on Friday.
This is despite the fact that each bottle of vaccine apparently contains six, rather than the five expected doses, Polis said.
“I’m really appealing to the federal government to take out the vaccines – Pfizer said they’re in a warehouse waiting for shipping instructions,” Polis said. “The federal government must be instructed today.”
As a result of the deficit, some health workers will have to delay the first vaccination, Polis said.
Twenty-five thousand doses received next week will be given to residents and employees of long-term care units, while 14,000 doses will go to hospitals for front-line health workers, Polis said, adding that the state still expects to receive 95,600 doses of Modern vaccine next week.
So far, 12,123 Colorado residents have been vaccinated, according to a new dashboard released Friday by the state.
Colorado is facing a steady downward trend in new COVID cases “that are not common across the country at this time,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy, adding that the state has “bent the curve” after Day Gratitude and “begins to see clear improvements” in hospitalizations.
On Friday, the state saw 3,693 new cases of COVID, 1,403 hospitalized with the virus and a total of 3,321 deaths, Polis said.
The state’s positivity rate is falling – to about 7 percent, from a high of nearly 13 percent in mid-November, he said. The World Health Organization this spring recommended a rate of up to 5% for communities to reopen businesses and other activities.
One in 59 Colorado residents is estimated to be contagious, Polis said, compared to estimates of one in 40 earlier this month.
In El Paso County, this week’s hospitalizations accounted for almost half of what they were in the previous week, the county’s health department said on Friday. The county registered 82 hospitalizations between December 11-17, down from December 4-10, 160, according to a press release. The county saw a nearly 30% drop in 14-day incidence levels, according to data available on its website. Deaths also fell from an average of seven days a week on December 8 to three and a half on Thursday.
State officials have been left wondering why shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for delivery, are subject to initial estimates when the company says it has deposits in its warehouse.
“This is disturbing and frustrating,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter on Thursday after learning from the CDC that the state’s allocation would be reduced by 40 percent. “We need accurate and predictable numbers to plan and ensure success on the ground.”
California, where an explosion in cases causes intensive care units to the point of rupture, will receive 160,000 fewer doses of vaccine than state officials had anticipated next week.
Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and Indiana were also told to expect smaller shipments.
In Washington, DC, two senior Trump administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said states would receive their full allowances, but disagreements over the vaccine supply and delivery schedule changes could be confusing.
An official said that the initial number of available doses that were provided to states are projections based on information from manufacturers, not fixed allocations.
The two officials also said that changes made by the federal government to the delivery schedule, at the request of the governors, could contribute to the wrong impression that fewer doses are coming. The key change involves distancing the delivery of weekly state allowances over several days to make distribution easier to manage.
“They will receive the weekly allowance, it will simply not come to them one day,” an official said.
Pfizer said that nothing had changed in terms of production.
“Pfizer has had no production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine and no shipments containing the vaccine are suspended or delayed,” spokesman Eamonn Nolan said in an email. “We continue to ship our orders to locations specified by the US government.”
The company said in a written statement that “it has successfully shipped all the 2.9 million doses that the US government has asked us to deliver to the locations they specify. We still have millions of doses in our warehouse, but so far we have not received shipping instructions for additional doses. “
Senior administration officials said Pfizer’s statement about the doses awaiting shipping instructions, while technically correct, conveniently omits the explanation: it was planned that way.
Federal officials said Pfizer has pledged to deliver 6.4 million doses of the vaccine in the first week after approval. But Federal Operation Warp Speed had already planned to distribute only 2.9 million of those doses immediately. Another 2.9 million were to be held at the Pfizer depot to ensure that people vaccinated in the first week could get a second shot later to make the protection fully effective. Finally, the government withholds an additional 500,000 doses as a reserve against unforeseen problems.
Pfizer said it remains confident it can deliver up to 50 million doses globally this year and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
The United States added a second COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal on Friday, as the outbreak goes through its deadliest phase, with the nation regularly recording more than 3,000 deaths a day.
The vaccine developed by Moderna received FDA approval on Friday, paving the way for its use to begin on Monday, in the largest vaccination unit in American history.
The goal is to vaccinate about 80 percent of the U.S. population by mid-2021 to finally conquer the outbreak.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.