As several countries across the country say the vaccines are no longer administered, and that they are waiting for the federal government to get additional doses, the incoming Biden team is pleading with them to just hold out hope for longer.
At public press conferences on Tuesday, officials from several states said they could not do vaccination faster in their countries until they received additional instructions on how to obtain the millions of additional doses needed to meet the growing demand.
Officials in California, New Jersey, Kentucky and New York all told The Daily Beast that residents of their states had their vaccinations canceled due to the low supply. Some have said that communication with the outgoing Trump administration over the past ten days and the confusing process of navigating the transition to a new White House has forced them to buy the vaccine directly from Pfizer and Moderna. Some countries have already inquired directly with the companies about the possibility of drawing up future orders, according to several officials familiar with the planning of their state.
“We do not have enough stock,” said Kentucky Governor Andrew Beshear. ‘The supply is going to be our biggest problem … and therefore we will have patience. Therefore, we can not guarantee that every pharmacy in Kentucky will get vaccinated. Beshear said he had requested from Operation Warp Speed that the federal government double the amount of vaccine the state receives each week.
In response to increasing concerns from states about their future vaccine supply and the ability to speed up their vaccination rates, President Joe Biden is urging states to refrain from buying doses directly from companies. According to two people familiar with the incoming government’s plans, Biden’s team feels confident that the elected president’s plan for COVID-19, which was set out in a speech last week, will adequately address the concerns.
“We need to have a national approach to vaccinations, and we need to ensure that states do not compete against each other as with PPE, ventilators and tests,” said TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for the Biden Transition. “We are taking aggressive steps such as fully enforcing the Defense Production Act to expand the supply of vaccines and communicate clearly with states on award and delivery.”
The president-elect said last week that he would significantly speed up the distribution of vaccines by increasing the recommendations for who gets the chance and when. And he released his $ 1.9 million COVID-19 plan, which calls for direct payments of $ 1,400 to most Americans, $ 350 billion in state and local aid, $ 50 billion for COVID-19 testing, and ‘ an additional $ 20 billion for a national vaccination program with the state and local governments.
“It’s going to take time to get where we need to be. There will be stumbling blocks, but I will always be honest with you about the progress we are making and what setbacks we are experiencing, “Biden said in his January 14 speech.
States struggling with increasing hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19 say they do not have time to wait until the incoming government reconsiders how the vaccines are ordered, shipped and delivered – they have just become accustomed to the new system. Most said they were waiting to get more information from the new administration: “We need these vaccines now,” said one state health official.
The Biden team did not specify exactly how the new administration would adapt the distribution process. According to government officials, the Biden team told them that the new administration would create a new version of the existing Operation Warp Speed structure and that the vaccine program would run out of the White House and under the supervision of Dr David Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Part of the confusion between states is how the latest federal guidelines for Trump administration on vaccine distribution have affected the manufacturing process. The Department of Health and Human Services, along with the Centers for Disease Control, recently unveiled a new set of recommendations that allow states to distribute the vaccine more freely – to increase the population that can receive the shot in the first wave. The federal government also said it would begin releasing the doses it originally kept in reserve for the second shot dose.
The change was welcome news for states struggling to find ways to administer the vaccine to residents more quickly. But the extra doses never showed up.
Some government officials suspect that the new guidelines have increased demand for the vaccine and that the supply chain could have broken down under pressure. In other words, the number of doses requested by states over the past two weeks could have simply overwhelmed the system. Other officials said they were not sure exactly what had happened, but that the doses of the vaccine were not complete. A report of The Washington Post said the second doses the federal government promised to release to states never exist. According to the report, the Trump administration has already begun exploiting those reserves and distributing them to states in early December.
Addressing the COVID-19 crisis will be a huge task for the Biden government, not only because the virus continues to spread rapidly through communities in the US, but because the new government wants to approach the federal government’s response differently than President Donald Trump. The Biden COVID-19 team says they want to empower the career scientists and doctors and reduce the bureaucracy surrounding obtaining states they need. It will take time, say officials working with the Biden COVID-19 task force. And it also requires resources that are not yet readily available.
“That’s why we are worried that things will get worse before they get better,” said one health official.
The recent complaints by states follow weeks of frustrations over the implementation of the federal government.
Days after the initial doses were shipped by Pfizer in the second week of December, countries received fewer vaccine doses than expected. Officials working with Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to detect a vaccine, have refuted the states’ concerns, saying a slight shift in the allocation schedule has caused a slight delay, but that more vaccines were on the way.
In the first days of the vaccine’s distribution, government officials closely followed the CDC’s recommendations, which set out how officials should proceed to dispense doses, including who should receive the vaccine first. Only earlier this month, after the vaccine percentage stopped, did the federal government begin discussing redefining the CDC’s guidelines in an effort to pressure states to distribute the vaccine more freely.
On January 12, the federal government, along with the Biden COVID-19 team, called on states to open the vaccines to anyone in America over the age of 65, as well as to anyone younger who already has a condition that can cause they are more vulnerable to the coronavirus. The government has also said it will not hold any more doses for the second vaccine.
As more and more people across the U.S. sign up to receive the vaccine before when they should, states say they have no one to hand out.
The U.S. death toll reached 400,000 on Tuesday, the eve of Biden’s inauguration.