TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) – Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to receive a life-saving COVID-19 vaccination that the 69-year-old piano teacher stood in line in a parking lot overnight with hundreds of other elders.
He wouldn’t do it again.
Hadler said he waited 14 hours and that a fight broke out almost before dawn on Tuesday, when people cut their tails outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where officials offered them shots based on first come, first served to the 65 or so. older.
“I’m afraid the event was a super-spreader,” she said. “I was petrified.”
The race to vaccinate millions of Americans begins with a slower and more messy start than public health officials and leaders of the Trump administration’s Warp Speed operation had expected.
State departments in the field of public health, overburdened and underfunded, are working to make plans for the administration of vaccines. Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, leading to long lines, confusion, frustration and blocked telephone lines. A multitude of logistical concerns have complicated the attempt to defeat the scourge that killed more than 340,000 Americans.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking for patience, noting that vaccine supply is limited.
“It may not be for everyone today, it may not be for next week. But in the next few weeks, as long as we continue to get the supply, you will have the opportunity to get that, “he said on Wednesday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a health policy researcher and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said the main problem is that states do not receive adequate financial or technical support from the federal government. Jha said the Trump administration, mainly the Department of Health and Human Services, has determined that states will fail.
“There are many more states to do,” he said, “but you need a much more active role from the federal government than they have been willing to do. They largely told the states, “This is your responsibility. Discover it. “
Delays in reporting the number of vaccinations partly explain why many states are failing to meet their year-end targets, but officials blame logistical and financial hurdles for the slow pace.
Many states do not have the money to hire staff, pay overtime, or reach the public. The equipment needed to keep the vaccines cold complicates their distribution. Providers should also follow up on vaccinations so that they have enough to deliver the second dose needed 21 days after the first.
Dr. James McCarthy, chief executive officer at the Hermann Memorial in Houston, said the hospital system has administered about half of the approximately 30,000 doses it has received since Dec. 15.
The system had to create a plan from scratch. Among other things, administrators had to ensure that everyone in the vaccination areas could socially distance themselves and had to build an observation period of 15 minutes for each patient so that recipients could be tracked for any side effects.
“We can’t just distribute them like candy,” McCarthy said.
Pasadena, California, is vaccinating its firefighters in groups of 50 people after completing two-day shifts so they can recover during the four days off. “We don’t want most of our workforce – if it suffers from side effects – to be out at the same time,” said city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian.
In South Carolina, state lawmakers are wondering why the state administered only 35,158 of the 112,125 Pfizer doses it had received by Wednesday. State Senator Marlon Kimpson said officials told him that some front-line health workers refuse to be vaccinated while others are on vacation.
Lin Humphrey, a college professor whose 81-year-old mother lives with him in a high-rise apartment in Miami, said it took him about 80 calls to get someone to a Miami Beach hospital that began inoculate the elderly last week.
“It reminded me of the ’80s when you had to turn to a radio station to be the tenth caller to get concert tickets,” Humphrey said. “When I finally made it, I cried on the phone with the woman.”
In recent weeks, Trump administration health officials have talked about the goal of delivering enough vaccine by the end of the month to inoculate 20 million Americans. But it is unclear whether the United States will achieve this sign.
Army General Gustave Perna, the chief officer of Operation Warp Speed, said on Wednesday that 14 million doses had been shipped across the country so far. Follow-up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that as of Wednesday, nearly 2.8 million injections had been given.
Officials say there is a gap in vaccination reporting, but it is happening even slower than expected. Perna predicted that the pace would increase next week.
“We agree that this number is lower than we expected,” said Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientist of Warp Speed.
On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said the Trump administration “lags far behind” and promised to pick up the pace once he takes office on January 20th. In early December, Biden promised to distribute 100 million photos in the first 100 days of his administration.
Jha said Biden’s goal is ambitious but achievable.
“It will not be easy if what they take over on January 20 is an infrastructure that is not ready to be executed on the first day,” he said.
In Tennessee, health officials were hoping to reach the goal of delivering 200,000 doses by the end of the year, but transportation delays could prevent that. Health officials said the state received 20,300 doses on Tuesday, which should have arrived last week.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” said Dr. Lisa Piercey, Tennessee’s health commissioner.
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Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press reporters John Raby of Charleston, West Virginia; Stefanie Dazio of Los Angeles; Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia; Marion Renault in Rochester, Minnesota; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Desiree Mathurin in Atlanta; and Michelle Liu of Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.