Trump administration officials are talking to Moderna about speeding up the coronavirus vaccination process, giving people only half the dose recommended by the company’s vaccine, a top adviser said on Sunday.
Moncel Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, said there was evidence that administering people between the ages of 18 and 55 two halves of the dose “induces an identical immune response” to the normal dose of 100 micrograms.
In an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Slaoui said the strategy “means meeting the exact goal of immunizing twice the number of people with the doses we have.”
But Slaoui also strongly supported the idea that people need a single shot instead of the current two-dose regimen, so it’s not clear how different it would be to give people two halves of a dose.
Slaoui’s comments come as the US vaccination program has crept out of the gate. Vaccine distribution was slower than expected, and actual vaccinations were even slower.
The administration did not approach its goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020. Only about 4 million Americans received the first of two doses and just over 13 million doses were administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.
The logistical problems have affected the Trump administration’s distribution efforts, with much of the crucial “last mile” going to underfunded local health departments.
States are struggling to manage the doses they already have, leading many experts to question a strategy that effectively doubles the availability of doses, but does not provide additional help to jurisdictions.
Slaoui told Brennan that he and others in the administration assumed that when states ordered a specific number of doses, they had distribution plans in place.
“Our assumption was that there is a plan in place for immunization. We are here to help with any specific request. We will do everything we can, as we have done in the last eight months, to make these vaccines, indeed, do it in the arms of the people “, said Slaoui.
Under the current federal plan, the administration’s Operation Warp Speed provides states with only half the required number of doses per week. The other half remains in a reservoir, retained to ensure that there is sufficient intake for the second dose.
Due to the inefficient launch, health experts and federal officials were looking for ways to speed up the process.
One possibility, recently adopted in the United Kingdom, is to give priority to the administration of all a first dose, postponing the second dose by up to three months.
Slaoui said he did not see this in the United States and questioned the science behind the delay.
Both Moderna and Pfizer were authorized in a two-dose form, and Slaoui said studies show that the second dose provides an immune response 10 times higher than the first dose.
“We don’t have data after a dose,” Slaoui said. Delaying the vaccination program “without data, I don’t think it would be responsible,” he said.