Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Wednesday made a clear statement to governors across the country – to circumvent the priority plan and release the COVID-19 vaccine to as many people as possible.
- Azar said the United States should not allow “perfection to be the enemy of the good.”
What is happening?
Azar said the focus of distributing COVID-19 vaccines should focus on vaccinating more people, rather than who should get the shots first, according to USA Today.
The original focus was on health care workers and residents of nursing homes. But 70% of the doses are still on pharmacy shelves, reports USA Today. Azar therefore suggests that the vaccines be shifted to humans.
- “We’d rather have states move as fast as possible and use every possible way to meet the demand – as places like Florida are trying – to put the vaccines in freezers,” Azar said. ‘It would be much better to move quickly and eventually vaccinate people with a lower priority than to let vaccination sit while states try to manage this problem. Faster administration can currently save lives. ”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention originally said that nursing home residents and health care workers should be one of the first to receive the vaccine.
More changes to the COVID-19 vaccine plan
The Daily Beast reports that some senior officials working with the Coronavirus Task Force in the White House are pushing for states to get the COVID-19 vaccine to whoever it wants.
- States across the country must distribute excess COVID-19 vaccines to whoever wants to receive them. Officials suggest that states stop coming up with a strategy and focus on a first-come-first-served basis to ensure vaccines do not expire.
Dr Scott Gottlieb, former FDA chief, has asked major pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to now distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to get it in more people, as I wrote about Deseret News.
- “Make the vaccine more widely available through retail pharmacies, through Walmart and Walgreens and CVS for a wider population, for a general population starting with age,” Gottlieb said in an interview with the “Face the Nation” program . ‘We can take it through the age continuum, making it available first for 75 and older, then 70 and higher, and 65 and older. There are 50 million Americans aged 65 and older, a large percentage of whom are likely to be vaccinated. At some point, we need to allow the supply here to meet the demand and get the shots in the arms of the people who really want to get vaccinated and go seek the vaccination. ‘