(Reuters) – Millions of COVID-19 vaccines remain unused in US hospitals and elsewhere in a week in the massive inoculation campaign, calling into question the government’s target of 20 million vaccinations this month.
As of Wednesday morning, only 1 million photos of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine had been administered, about a third of the first shipment sent last week. More than 9.5 million doses of vaccine, including Moderna, have now been sent to states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While hospitals have started administering the Moderna vaccine, the CDC has not yet reported this data and there may be a gap in the reporting of vaccines given from both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The slow pace has barely increased since the first week, when 614,000 photos were taken, although nearly 2.9 million were shipped.
Hospitals said the first COVID-19 vaccinations began slowly last month, as they navigated preparing previously frozen photos for use, finding employees to run vaccination clinics and ensuring adequate social distancing both before and after vaccination. Some said they only took about 100 photos on the first day.
They were facing an increase in COVID-19, as cases in the United States exceeded 18 million, with 323,000 deaths. (Chart: tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)
The Trump administration has promised to vaccinate $ 20 million by the end of the year, while providing little funding to achieve the goal.
There are nine days to give nearly 19 million photos or more than 2 million vaccinated people a day, including Christmas Day.
Nearly 5.9 million doses of Moderna Inc vaccine are expected to disappear this week and another 2 million doses from Pfizer and partner BioNTech.
“The commitment we can make is to provide doses of vaccine,” Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui said in a press release Wednesday. He noted that the rate of people who received a blow to the arm is “slower than I thought it would be.”
Two more vaccines can be approved in February from Johnson & Johnson Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
The government’s target is 100 million Pfizer and Moderna gunfire by March 1.
Warp Speed Operation Gustave Perna, who is leading the vaccine distribution effort, said Monday that CDC data reflects a reporting gap and that the number of vaccinations will catch up as time goes on.
The CDC said its data may also reflect a gap between vaccine dosing and state reporting. Most vaccinations at nursing homes began en masse only this week, and CDC data does not specify how many doses from the first shipment were held by states for that group.
ASSEMBLY STAFF
Margaret Mary Health, a 25-bed rural hospital in Indiana, has built a car vaccination clinic at a local fire station and a local recreation center to vaccinate health workers in surrounding counties, according to Executive Director Tim Putnam.
Putnam, who conducted traffic control at the clinic, said they used about 400 of the 1,100 doses received.
“We are asking for volunteers from our staff, volunteers from the local community college to step in and build this process from scratch,” he said.
Some of the largest hospitals in the United States inoculated more than 1,000 people a day after performing dry periods of vaccine administration and launch.
Vermont, Delaware and Idaho were among the states that confirmed that their states gave only thousands of doses – a fraction of those available – in the first week.
Jason Schwartz, an assistant professor of health policy at Yale School of Public Health, described the initial issue as “discouraging” and said “the challenges of getting vaccines out as soon as we are able to make them will only increase.”
Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine could speed up deployment because it requires a conventional refrigerator and has no specialized procedures for thawing and administration, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association for Immunization Managers. The AstraZeneca two-dose vaccine can also be stored in the refrigerator.
“When it’s stable in the fridge and a single-dose diet, it can’t be easier than that,” Hannan said.
HOSPITALS BEGIN slowly, but accelerate
Dr. Saul Weingart, chief physician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said the hospital administered about 750 doses out of the approximately 3,000 available as of Friday. It started with 100 photos a day and worked up to about 450, he said.
He said hospital experts modeled that the administration of Pfizer COVID-19 would take 10 minutes, about two to three times longer than a flu shot, due to the procedures required because the vaccine is stored in a deep freezer. Patients should socially distance themselves before and after vaccination and be monitored for allergic reactions.
The United States administers 170 million flu vaccinations each year in a few months, but for the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States must administer about three times the number of vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are two doses – to reach the majority Americans by July. At the current rate, the US appears to have the capacity to manage less than a third of the photos sent in a given week, highlighting the gap.
A spokesman for the Houston Methodist, a hospital in Houston, Texas, said it had given 8,300 employees the vaccine since Monday, with about 7,000 doses remaining from the first shipment.
Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California has vaccinated more than 3,000 employees and said it will last six weeks for everyone, similar to its flu vaccination program.
States and health departments need federal money to hire staff, from data center workers to track vaccinations to call center employees to field questions, said Adriane Casalotti, the association’s head of government and public affairs. National Association of Health and County Officials
The current coronavirus aid package in the US Congress is allocating more than $ 8 billion for the distribution of the vaccine, but it is delayed.
“You can’t hire someone in December and train them if you don’t know you can pay them in January,” Casalotti said.
Reporting by Rebecca Spalding and Carl O’Donnell; additional reports by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Caroline Humer and Lisa Shumaker