President Biden may have raised the hope early on when he said he expected any American who wanted a COVID-19 vaccine in the spring to get it.
Still, he did not go so far as to determine which month, and the possibility that ‘spring’ means at the end of summer, opened up in mid-June. The White House, however, quickly dashed expectations.
“Not everyone will be – not eligible for this spring, as you all know, even if the CDC offers updated guidance,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. ‘But [Mr. Biden] would certainly refer to health and medical experts and of course the guidance of dr. Fauci about when we might be at the rate of herd immunity. ‘
The White House explained that 100 million vaccinations in the first hundred days of Mr. Biden’s presidency is still the official target, as originally planned, after Mr. Biden expressed the hope that 150 million COVID shots could take place in its first hundred days. And the 100 million-in-100-day target is one of the country’s leading experts in infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, seems to agree that it is realistic. “Once you get rolling and gain momentum, I think we can reach 1 million a day or even more,” he told the Associated Press earlier this month.
At 1 million shots per day, it will take the rest of 2021 to vaccinate about 70% of American adults. This may be in the environment of herd immunity, the point at which the transmission of the disease slows down, although scientists are not yet sure what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19.
The White House has also not yet said when younger Americans without prior health conditions, who are not essential workers, can expect to get their shots fired.
The government has taken steps to increase vaccine production, and announced late Tuesday he plans to buy another 200 million Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses that are expected to be available in the summer, although the target of 100 million doses within 100 days does not depend on the approval of new vaccines.
Experts from public health and medical supply chains believe that a number of factors will determine the distribution of the vaccine among the general population – essentially adults under the age of 65 who do not have underlying health conditions and are not essential workers.
“Everyone needs to realize that scaling up to 400 million doses of a vaccine that we did not have a year ago is going to take some time,” said Dr. Julie Swann, head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, said. . “I do not expect the general public to have access in late spring unless we have a few random things that happen between now and then.”
Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and associate professor of technology and business management at INSEAD, says the main components involved in achieving the vaccination goal. And they are ‘equally important and not a given’, he said.
Yadav thinks vaccine production will have to work almost ‘perfectly’ to keep up with demand, but still believes vaccinations would be available to the general public in May or early June. But March or April is, according to him, ‘highly impractical’.
Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Public Policy and executive director of Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research, told CBS News that he was concerned about the “multiple bottlenecks” in vaccinating vaccines. Distribution and administration were slower than expected.
He said where the bottlenecks are in the supply chain and what will show whether a spring timeline is ‘achievable or aspiring’.
“It’s not just the sheer amount of vaccines that matters,” Lee said. “It matters who gets it really,” Lee said.
Residents can be vaccinated at a faster rate if states ignore priority guidelines, but it will be counterproductive to protect the most vulnerable, Lee said. There are anecdotes about cutting lines wealthy Americans, and in other cases, people who are not on the highest priority lists get shots because of the pressure not to waste the highly perishable doses.
“Because the reconstituted Pfizer vaccine had to be used or discarded within hours, several doses were administered to health workers who were not administered to the front line so that valuable vaccine would not be discarded,” Redlands Community Hospital spokesman said. Nikyah Thomas-Pfeiffer said in a statement.
And keeping up with the million-shots-a-day pace can get harder, Lee and others said, pointing out that low-hanging fruit vaccinations have started in places like hospitals and long-term care centers. If there is wider access to the vaccine, some populations may find it more difficult to reach, depending on where they live and what their socio-economic circumstances are. Lee will take more effort to reach U.S. residents who do not speak English and who have regular access to health care.
Governments in the state are beginning to experience the pressure to vaccinate less vulnerable populations, Lee said in particular of large employers wanting to vaccinate their employees so they can work safely again.
The Biden administration must conduct its own investigation into where the bottlenecks are in the distribution of vaccines, Lee said. It is beginning to address this and this week to announce new vaccine award schemes that will give the state more information about their vaccines so that they can better plan their distribution.
The federal government can also get more people vaccinated faster by establishing or supporting vaccines, said Yadav, who according to the Biden government is developing.
Swann said the administration of vaccines would be more effective if each state had a website where people could sign up to take their shots, rather than go through local health departments. But there are currently only a handful of states with a centralized vaccination registration system or waiting list, according to a recent review by the Wall Street Journal.
New Jersey has a nationwide registration system. In California and New Jersey, residents can pre-register to be notified when it’s their turn, but that does not necessarily put them in line to receive the vaccine. South Dakota does not have a waiting list in the entire country, but it does lead residents to local health care providers where they can get a waiting list.
“Ultimately, I think we will have enough vaccine for all Americans who want one, and for additional enhancers if needed,” Swann said. “New processes take time, but supply will increase.”
Alexander Tin contributed to this report.