States’ new vaccine worry: Not enough doses
January 20, 2021
More than a dozen states say they are starting to run out of supplies of coronavirus shots as they ramp up the pace of vaccinations, the latest hitch in a struggling nationwide inoculation effort.
New York City on Wednesday canceled at least 23,000 vaccine appointments with supplies running low for first doses. Some states, like Colorado and Oregon, are scaling back eligibility for vaccinations or rejecting new, expansive federal guidelines in an effort to ration scarce shots.
The situation represents a reversal, in some places, from the troubled beginnings of the vaccine rollout, when some states couldn’t move fast enough to use up the shots sitting on their shelves.
“We have the capacity to get our populations vaccinated to move through the priorities very quickly. But the supplies have not increased; they’re level right now,” said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, in an interview. “We all fully expected our great manufacturing enterprises to accelerate the manufacturing, and we're not realizing it yet.”
The supply problem is one of the first major challenges Biden administration officials will face as they try to ramp up vaccinations to at least 1 million per day. President Joe Biden has pledged to hit 100 million vaccinations in his administration’s first 100 days, promising new federal resources for a vaccination effort that’s largely been left to the states. The new administration, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has said it will invoke the Defense Production Act to help ramp up vaccine manufacturing, while it’s also preparing to stand up mass vaccination sites.
State health officials say they desperately need better estimates weeks in advance on vaccine shipments from the federal government to plan everything from mass vaccination sites to smaller clinics. Instead, they’ve typically been informed less than a week before shipments.
“There's just no trust in the allocation system, and I think you see that at the county level, too,” said Claire Hannan, the executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.
In Michigan, hospitals have had to cancel “many” appointments in the past five weeks due to shortages of vaccine supply, according to the Michigan Health and Hospital Association.
Local health officials say some of the issue stems from the Trump administration’s decision last week to encourage states to vastly expand vaccine eligibility to people 65 and over and those with high-risk medical conditions without increasing the vaccine supply. Many states followed that guidance, opening up vaccinations beyond frontline health workers and nursing home residents who received top priority in most places.
“That announcement last week put the pressure and the expectation on us that we would go down to 65,” said Kris Ehresmann, a top Minnesota Health Department official who said the state expanded eligibility because of the Trump administration’s announcement. But the state is limiting shots to nine vaccination sites for Minnesotans 65 and older and schoolteachers until more supply arrives.
Many states also wrongly believed they would be receiving a flood of new doses this week after Trump health officials said they would no longer hold back booster shots. But they soon learned the government’s stockpile was already empty.
Nearly 36 million doses have been distributed to states, while about half of those — 16.5 million — have been administered, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Federal officials have cautioned that’s likely an undercount because of a dayslong reporting lag in some places.
A “steady cadence” of doses are now available to states, according to a former Trump administration official. On Thursday, when states begin ordering doses for next week, more than 50 million shots will have been made available since the first two coronavirus vaccines were authorized just over a month ago, the official said. A third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson could be authorized in the coming weeks, though the company has hit some production setbacks.
Although the nationwide pace of vaccinations has ticked up closer to the 1 million per day mark Biden must hit to reach his 100 million vaccination goal, allies have warned that progress is at risk.
Governors in private planning calls with Biden officials have stressed their supply problems. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said he told the Biden team his state could use three to five times the amount of vaccine it’s now receiving.
“If we are going to reach 100 million people in 100 days, then the federal government has to pick up the pace,” Polis said in a Tuesday press conference.
Colorado is among the states rejecting the new federal guidelines on vaccine eligibility, instead limiting shots to people 70 and older. Maryland this week opened vaccinations to residents 75 and older, and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, said his state will do the same next week and won’t broaden eligibility until supply increases.
“With such a limited and unpredictable supply of vaccine coming to us, we’re prioritizing those most likely to die if they contract COVID,” Scott tweeted. “Over-promising is not the answer. The logical approach is to manage the supply of the vaccine we’re receiving and if we’re allotted more, then we’ll scale up- which we hope is the case.”
Oregon scrapped plans to expand vaccinations to teachers and people 65 and older after it learned the federal government’s vaccine reserve had been used up. Instead, it will start vaccinating teachers next week and people 80 or older in early February. The state expects to reach all adults 65 and over within 12 weeks.
States early in the vaccination effort struggled to use up the doses they received. Those problems have started to clear up as more set up mass vaccination sites and opened up eligibility beyond the first priority groups.
Still, hospitals say they’re working through complicated logistics. They’re scheduling appointments without knowing far in advance how much vaccine they’ll be receiving, and that’s led some to cancel appointments for first shots.
“It wasn’t as though there was a playbook for how to respond because of the unique nature of the pandemic, of the virus.,” said Mary Mayhew, the CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, who until the fall was a top state health official.
“[It’s] inevitable that you’re going to have some of these bumps along the way, but the shared goal of everyone is to collaborate to support that urgent deployment of the vaccine, however that ultimately is orchestrated," she said.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
