SALT LAKE CITY – Utah is expected to receive approximately 32,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine each week to end in 2020, following a “miscommunication” between the federal government and states receiving vaccine doses, according to a carrier. word of the state health department.
The state has already received 25,000 doses, according to an update from the Utah Department of Health on Monday. The new weekly estimate means that Utah is unlikely to reach the 154,000 doses of vaccine it had initially anticipated by the end of December.
Utah was among the states that reported late last week that it had not received as many doses of vaccine as it had estimated in the first week after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved by federal regulators. Army General Gustave Perna apologized for the blunders over the weekend, calling the initial estimate of vaccines that should be distributed a “misreport,” the Associated Press reported.
“I am the one who approved the forecast sheets. I am the one who approved the allocations,” Perna said during a telephone briefing with reporters, according to AP. “There is no problem with the process. There is no problem with the Pfizer vaccine. There is no problem with the Moderna vaccine.”
It now appears that the snafu distribution has changed the number of vaccines Utah will receive by the end of the year, even though the Moderna vaccine has reached the state. A health department spokesman told KSL.com on Tuesday that Utah officials now expect 16,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine and another 16,000 doses of Moderna vaccine each week. If this estimate is maintained, it would indicate less than 100,000 doses distributed in Utah by the end of the year.
It remains unclear how the adjusted figures will impact the projected timelines for when certain groups, such as residents of long-term care institutions or teachers, will be given access to the vaccine.
Where the vaccines go
It’s been a week since Utah health facilities began vaccinating front-line workers. Shortly after this began, the Utah Department of Health began providing statistics on COVID-19 vaccinations in the state.
About 6,520 have already been administered in the state since the COVID-19 update on Monday. These data may not seem overly interesting, as they only reflect hospital staff at this time, but show that the difference between the time the first five hospitals in the state received the vaccine to the next 30 health care units was much more smaller than originally thought.
The health department, which estimated in November that the gap could be up to two weeks, reported that some vaccines were given in all health districts except San Juan and TriCounty (Daggett, Duchesne and Uintah counties) in the first week of arrival. The first five hospitals covered only three of the 13 districts.
To everyone’s surprise, Salt Lake County – the health district with the most employees in medical institutions – had been administering the most vaccines since Monday afternoon. Of the 3,698 vaccines administered, it represents about 57% of all vaccines administered so far, according to the health department.
Understanding the emerging UK strain COVID-19
A recent international story is gaining interest among researchers around the world, including those in Utah.
Health officials in the UK say a new variant of the country’s new coronavirus is spreading faster than the original strain prominent there, indicating a mutation. The strain, known as B.1.1.7, was first documented in September and accounted for about a quarter of all cases by mid-November, Science Magazine reported. It jumped 60% in London early last week, which scientists said could mean the mutation is 70% more transmissible than the previous dominant strain.
As the New York Times reported, Prime Minister Boris Johnson tightened restrictions in London and many parts of south-east London in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus strain. Several European countries have also banned travel to the UK due to the spread of the mutation.
It is noteworthy that experts pointed out quite early in the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has already moved into various strains. The bigger questions are whether the new UK strain is more lethal or will disrupt COVID-19 vaccination efforts, especially if it occurs in other parts of the globe.
So far, researchers say they don’t think so. In an interview with KSL TV on Monday, Dr. Sankar Swaminathan, head of the infectious diseases division at the University of Utah Health, explained that the changes occurred in the spike protein that the virus uses to invade human cells. He said there was no evidence to lead experts to believe it was more deadly or to thwart vaccination efforts already underway in the UK.
The vaccine, he pointed out, helps produce antibodies in different parts of a spike protein. So when someone is vaccinated, their immune system makes several defenses against the coronavirus’s peak protein, even if parts of it have moved.
While it is possible for the virus to mutate and change its spike protein, it would be very difficult for it to change it so completely that the vaccine would no longer produce useful antibodies, Swaminathan said.
Dr Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch, also said the new mutation in the UK was unlikely to disrupt the two available COVID-19 vaccines during an interview with NPR on Monday.
Menachery told the media that it takes years of drastic mutations to form before a virus passes over a vaccine. It is a potential long-term concern, but it is almost certainly not a short-term problem that would destroy ongoing vaccination efforts.
The vaccines that have been developed are really generated against – to generate a broad response. And so the vaccine uses our immune system to target more parts of the virus, he said. “And so, in this case, we may have one or two parts that are different, but we are targeting, with vaccines, more parts. And so it is very difficult for a virus to overcome it in a short time as we are talking about here. “
Swaminathan added that while the mutation could become the new dominant strain, it should not stop public health officials from focusing on getting enough vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19.
contributing: Jed Boal, KSL TV
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