Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to White House Covid-19, warned that there was concern that suppliers, amid a lack of predictability over supply, were holding back the available doses.
“We believe that some healthcare providers regularly withhold doses intended as first doses and instead hold them for second doses for patients. We want to be clear that we understand why healthcare providers did this, it does not have to to happen, and should not happen, ‘Slavitt said at Monday’s virtual press briefing.
But Slavitt predicted that the “effectiveness of doses administered will gradually improve.”
“On January 20, states administered 46% of their inventory. Today it is 62%. We are focused on it every hour every day,” he said.
Slavitt suggested that patients’ appointments for a first dose be canceled in some cases, and insisted that it was urgently necessary to take out first doses as soon as possible. He said the government wanted to take a look at the planning of vaccines for three weeks last week, to allay concerns that the second doses could be withheld.
“With this action, states and vaccine providers will use their first doses faster to vaccinate as many people as quickly and as fairly as possible, because they now have the predictability that the second dose will be there when it comes,” he said. said.
Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, again on Monday called for people to be vaccinated against Covid-19 when it is their turn to deploy the vaccine – not just for personal health, but also to help prevent more coronavirus variants from popping up in the future.
“You need to be vaccinated if it is available as quickly and as quickly as possible,” Fauci said during an information session in the White House, adding that viruses cannot mutate if they do not recur.
“You stop their replication by vaccinating widely,” Fauci said. “If you get the vaccine available, please get vaccinated.”
CNN’s Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.