Jha and others have accused US officials of placing the burden of vaccination efforts on abandoned countries, delaying funds to set up an infrastructure and giving the countries little guidance on how to prepare for the administration of the vaccines.
‘I have long had this fear that people in the White House and [US health officials] just did not pay attention to this and in the last few weeks it has become really very clear, ”Jha, who first issued his criticism on Twitter, said in an interview.
Jha said that planning for the critical ‘last mile’ of vaccination should start earlier, ‘so that every nursing home in the United States is ready to take the plunge on the day the vaccine is approved by the FDA. word. ‘
He continued, “It would have done a government that cared to protect lives.”
Instead, he said, the vaccination effort is running alarmingly slowly at a time when the deadly coronavirus is re-emerging nationwide.
Federal officials predicted that by the end of the year, the United States would deliver 20 million vaccine doses. But in the latest update Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 11.4 million vaccine doses were sent to states, and 2.1 million people received the first shots in their two-dose regimens.
“They promised too much, and now there is under delivery,” said dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, said.
In Massachusetts, where officials initially said they would expect a 300,000-dose allotment on Dec. 31, the number was scaled back to 265,000 earlier this month after initial U.S. projections were incorrect. Baker administration officials said Tuesday that 257,750 doses have been shipped to date. According to them, first shots were given to 67,016 state residents on Monday.
Trump officials have put aside criticism.
Michael Pratt, a spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, which coordinates the federal vaccination effort, attributed the shortages in part to delays in reporting administered doses. He said in a statement that the gap between the number of doses distributed and administered is expected at this stage in the program.
Operation Warp Speed remains on track to allocate 20 million doses for the first of two required vaccinations by the end of the year, the statement said, “with the distribution of the first 20 million doses extending into the first week of January, while states place orders for it. ” He promised that the doses for everyone to receive their second shots would be distributed ‘a few weeks later’.
But the statement addressed distribution, not the important next step: vaccinating people with the vaccine.
The importance of the race to vaccinate Americans is growing as the CDC predicted on Tuesday that the death toll from COVID-19 could rise to 400,000 by Inauguration Day.
With the fact that federal officials handed over the vaccination planning to the states, officials sought to pay for the programs. Massachusetts officials have not said how much the vaccinations will cost, but they are working to identify pools of revenue – including $ 88.9 million from the COVID-19 relief bill signed by President Trump on Sunday – to cover costs.
Biden, what in Wilmington, Del. Speaking, he promised that 100 million vaccines would be administered in his first hundred days in office – an achievement that he said would require the vaccination to take place at five or six times the current rate. To support the acceleration, Biden says, he will use the Defense Production Act to order the industry to manufacture vaccine materials and personal protective equipment.
The president-elect has tempered his ambitious tone with a warning that vaccinations will still take a lot of time and effort. “This is going to be the biggest operational challenge we have ever encountered as a nation,” he said.
Disorder over the slow deployment, which has been brewing quietly among health leaders over the past week, erupted in public opinion on Monday night when Jha took to Twitter to express his frustrations. His thread has garnered thousands of likes and retweets – and resonated with public health experts in Massachusetts and beyond.
Other health leaders confirmed Dha’s criticism yesterday, calling the federal response inadequate. They also questioned whether state health officials, underfunded and overwhelmed by ten months of fighting the pandemic, had the task of organizing the final kilometers for the final distribution of the Pfizer and Modern vaccines allowed for emergency use earlier this month.
“Speed is what matters,” said David Williams, president of Health Business Group, a Boston management consulting firm. “It should be D-Day now. But what happens nationally is that it is only done in a bureaucratic way and that it is not done with the urgency you would do in a civil defense or wartime. ‘
Williams cited data from the University of Oxford showing that Israel, with a population not much larger than Massachusetts, has already administered 5.68 doses per 100 people, compared to the U.S. total of 0.64 per 100.
‘States have all submitted their plans to the federal government, but we have not yet seen a coherent national plan explaining how they are going to increase the speed. [of distribution], ”The dr. Leana Wen, a visiting professor of health policy and management at the Milken School of Public Health, at George Washington University.
Wen said that according to her calculation, the country should vaccinate 3.5 million people a day to reach 80% vaccination by the middle of next year, compared to about 1 million a week.
“You have to have a national strategy. It cannot be piece-by-piece. You can not spread responsibility and accountability, ”said Wen.
In Massachusetts, the deployment at some hospitals was rocky, and some front-line workers complained that colleagues who did not treat COVID-19 patients jumped to the front of the line. At Mass. General Brigham, the largest hospital system in the state, a computer error caused a vaccine enrollment website to crash temporarily.
But the biggest setback in Massachusetts came when federal officials told the Baker government on Dec. 18 that their promised Pfizer vaccine shipments would be reduced by 20 percent this month. Governor Charlie Baker said he was “frustrated” by the reduction in the grant, which could delay implementation by a week or so.
General Gustave Perna, the military leader of Operation Warp Speed, took responsibility for confusion over allocations to Massachusetts and other states and said the week before Christmas that he had given the wrong guidance because he did not have a “clear understanding” of the distribution process of have not had vaccines. .
For public health leaders, the federal support that was so important for the development of the vaccine and its onset of distribution has fallen away now that it’s time to administer the doses.
“A lot of money is, quite appropriately, to the companies to develop and test the vaccine, and to take the speed to deliver vaccines,” Schaffner said. “But at that point, federal aid stopped. The hard work has just begun: placing the vials in the arms. ”
Dasia Moore can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @daijmoore. Robert Weisman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.