WASHINGTON (AP) – Barely a month after a massive vaccination campaign to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration unexpectedly geared up on Tuesday to speed up the delivery of shots. A slow start had sparked widespread concern among states and public health officials.
Now Alex Azar, Health and Human Services, has announced two major changes. First, the government will no longer hold back the required second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, practically doubling the supply. Second, states must immediately begin vaccinating other groups lower on the priority scale, including people 65 and older and younger people with certain health conditions.
The move will make the outgoing administration more attuned to the new Biden-Harris team. On Friday, President-elect Joe Biden said he will soon release most of the available vaccine doses to protect more people. He said he supported the immediate release of vaccines that health authorities were cautiously holding back to ensure that they would be available to people who needed their second dose.
“We had withheld a second dose as a safety stock,” Azar told ABC. “We now believe that our production is so predictable that we can ensure second doses are available to people from ongoing production. So everything is now available to our states and our healthcare providers. “
At the same time, he gave states the green light to drastically expand the pool of people who qualify for vaccines.
“We are calling on our governors to now vaccinate people 65 and over and under 65 with a (health problem) because we need to expand the group,” he said.
By Monday morning, the government had distributed approximately 25.5 million doses across states, US territories, and major cities. But only about 9 million people had received their first injection. That means that only about 35% of the available vaccines had been administered.
Initially, the recordings went to health workers and nursing home residents. Those 75 and older were next in line. But even with the vaccination of that limited group of people, problems arose. Some hospital and nursing home personnel were reluctant to receive the vaccine. Scheduling issues delayed admissions to nursing homes.
Some states, including Arizona, have or are planning to open massive vaccination centers, aiming to inoculate thousands of people per day at one location. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis opened up vaccinations to people 65 and older. In other states, local health authorities have begun to ask residents 65 and older to register, pending the expansion of the vaccination campaign.
“We need to get more administrative channels,” said Azar. ‘We have to take it to the pharmacy, to municipal health centers.
“We will deploy teams to support states that make massive vaccination efforts if they want to,” he added.
While Azar said the shift was a natural evolution of the Trump administration’s efforts, he had recently raised questions about whether Biden’s call to speed up supplies was sensible. The Trump administration, which led a crash attempt to develop and manufacture vaccines, hopes to prevent a repeat of past debacles involving coronavirus testing. Nicknamed “Operation Warp Speed,” the effort has yielded two highly effective vaccines, with more to come.
Each state has its own plan for who should be vaccinated, based on recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommendations give first priority to health professionals and nursing home residents.
But the slow pace of vaccine rollout has frustrated many Americans at a time when the coronavirus death toll continues to soar. More than 376,000 people have died, according to the Johns Hopkins database.
US surgeon general Jerome Adams said hundreds of thousands of people across the country are vaccinated every day, but the pace of vaccinations needs to improve.
“We are in a race against this virus and frankly we are behind,” Adams told Fox & Friends. “The good news is that 700,000 people are vaccinated every day. We are going to hit 1 million people and we have to keep increasing that pace. “
In Philadelphia, health department spokesman James Garrow said Washington’s new direction will take time to find out before it affects vaccine distribution in the city. “This is a big change from nowhere after months of planning,” said Garrow.
Washington, DC opened vaccines for residents 65 and older on Monday, and the system was quickly overwhelmed. People reported problems with the website for registration and waiting for hours to register by phone. A message on the city’s website Tuesday morning said, “All 6,700 available vaccination appointments for the week of 1/11/21 were completed.”
Biden is expected to deliver a speech on Thursday outlining his plan to speed up vaccines to more people in the first part of his administration. His transition team has vowed to release as many doses of vaccine as possible, rather than continuing the Trump administration’s policy of withholding millions of doses to ensure there is enough supply to give those who receive the first injection a second. get it.
The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine requires a second injection approximately three weeks after the first vaccination. Another vaccine, this one manufactured by Moderna, requires a second injection about four weeks after that. One-time vaccines are still being tested.
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AP writers Candice Choi in New York and Carole Feldman in Washington contributed.