Some states have expressed disappointment over the rollout, acknowledging that they have their own problems, but have also sought more federal resources amid concerns over the burden they now have on getting vaccines into patients’ arms. In several cases, local snafus on the ground have caused their own delays, not to mention dangerous and costly mistakes.
With no federal mandate for the administration of the vaccine, the states must decide who gets the vaccine and when it creates a confusing patchwork of rules that are very different across the country. While some states have focused exclusively on health workers, others have also vaccinated the elderly and other frontline workers.
The West Virginia Government, Jim Justice, announced that people over the age of 80 are eligible to receive the vaccine on Wednesday, while the Tennessee Department of Health said the vaccine will be administered to residents 75 years and older, teachers and child care workers.
Texas has distributed only one-third of the vaccines it has received so far, according to numbers released on the state’s vaccine panel. And in Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he was not happy with the number of vaccines administered in his state, as well as the compliance of those in priority groups who choose to receive the vaccine.
Several states also said that it was difficult to plan a vaccination of vaccines when their supply numbers from the Trump administration were constantly changing and that they only received information about the vaccine supply week-to-week.
“There is no federal organization, no federal implementation, there is no coordination between the federal government and state governments,” Lieutenant General John Fetterman, Pennsylvania, a Democrat, told CNN “Newsroom” Thursday.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” that the federal government can still help increase the distribution of vaccines without controlling every step. “Instead of stepping in and taking over, I think it might be better to give more resources and work with them,” said Fauci, who also advises President-elect Joe Biden. “In other words, if we do not say we are taking over, we are going to do your job, but say that we will really help you do your job, especially by giving you a lot more resources.”
States, however, realize that for the time being, they are not getting a major increase in funding from the federal government, following the latest stimulus bill passed in Congress, without billions of dollars in state and local relief that Republicans were opposed to.
Trump administration officials insist that a delay in vaccinating states is one of the reasons for the low numbers, but they acknowledged this week that the numbers are lagging behind and that the federal government has a better must do work to address bottlenecks.
“We know it has to get better, and we’re working hard to make it better,” he said. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, said at a Wednesday news conference.
According to a Republican government official, one major problem is that states are placed in charge of all logistical decisions to get the vaccine from suppliers as soon as they are shipped from the federal government, especially the so-called “last mile” vaccine. travel before being given to individuals.
Another problem was the complicated storage and transportation needs of the vaccines, as many of the suppliers did not have the necessary tools to handle the storage requirements. This official also noted that many medical facilities also had to provide training on the handling and administration of the vaccine.
A HHS spokesman defends the government’s work with states, tweeting that the CDC issued $ 340 million to influenza / COVID vaccination jurisdictions in September. The CDC issued another $ 140 million to COVID vaccination jurisdictions in December. “
A senior Trump administration official has stressed that states that do not report faster are contributing to the delay, something Operation Warp Speed operations officer Gustave Perna said will “intensify” as reporting becomes routine. But unlike Trump, other administrative officials have acknowledged that there are shortcomings and room for improvement.
“We would like to see it go smoothly and have 20 million doses of people by the end of 2020, which was the forecast. Clearly that did not happen. And that is disappointing,” Fauci said Thursday.
‘Do not translate’
The US has so far given emergency permission to two vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, with others likely to be online in the US next year that will help accelerate the timeline for vaccination.
Both vaccines require two doses: the Pfizer shot requires a second dose 21 days later and the Moderna vaccine 28 days later. The second doses are currently withheld by the federal government, and will be available and administered when needed to give the second doses.
But Fauci on Thursday suggested that the distribution of the first doses to more people be ‘considered’ to increase the number of people who can be vaccinated, although this raises the risk that production problems could prevent people from getting the second admission.
“I still think, if you do it right, you can do a single dose, discuss doses for the second dose, and still do the job,” Fauci said on Today, “but there are many discussions about whether you want to. spread the initial vaccination by having more people vaccinated in the first round. ‘
Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst and former Baltimore health commissioner, said the federal government had to build and fund infrastructure months ago to distribute the vaccine while they were still increasing production.
“What went wrong in this process? We need a real-time tracking to see where the position is,” Wen said on CNN’s “Newsroom” on Thursday. “We need to have a lot more resources dedicated to distribution and not just to scientific development, because otherwise Operation Warp Speed for science clearly does not translate into warp speed for distribution.”
Problems with delaying the spread of the vaccine are not universal across the country. Some government officials say they have been happy with the system so far.
“We knew it was a complicated process. We were amazed at how smoothly it went,” one Southeast government official told CNN.
But these sentiments underscore the gap in states, with many state health officials saying they need more and more money
“The state health departments are fighting to the extreme against Covid and are doing testing. The province and the locals are in the same boat,” a government official in the northeast told CNN. “It’s not just the scope of the vaccine operation, but it also places it on what states are already dealing with.”