A few weeks after the first coronavirus vaccine was approved in the United States, it became clear that the explosion of the vaccine was starting painfully slowly.
Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine initiative, predicted that by the end of 2020, 20 million Americans would receive a coronavirus vaccine. As of Dec. 30, less than 2.8 million people had their first injections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. and prevention.
But dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on Sunday that vaccinations could speed up soon.
Fauci said there is no reason why the US cannot currently vaccinate 1 million people a day.
The pace would put the country on course to reach President-elect Joe Biden to vaccinate 100 million people in its first hundred days.
“We’re not where we want to be, there’s no doubt about it, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate, get some momentum and see what happens when we get the first few weeks of January, “Fauci said.
He cited the widespread attempts at vaccination against smallpox in 1947 as an example.
“I was a six-year-old boy who was one of those vaccinated,” Fauci said. “If New York can do 5 million in two weeks, then the United States can do a million a day.”
To get vaccinations back on track
In the absence of clear federal leadership, the deployment of U.S. vaccines has turned into a patchwork quilt response that places a heavy burden on already overwhelming state health departments.
Local officials have the task of coordinating the vaccination schedules while also confronting a tsunami of sick patients. Many health departments do not have the funding to appoint enough staff to administer doses in large groups. Others do not have the expertise to transfer thousands of doses from local warehouses to the arms of individuals – which experts call the challenge “last mile”.
“Vaccinations that sit on the shelves do nothing while thousands of Americans die,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told Business Insider. “It’s a travesty. It’s the most ridiculous example of our country’s incredible ability to be innovative in producing the vaccine and yet the inability of our government to help it get people.”
He added that “the Biden team has a lot of hard work ahead of them.”
Biden’s 100-day target is likely to require more funding from Congress, in addition to the December $ 8 billion package that helps states distribute vaccines. Many public health experts say it will also require a greater partnership between federal and state governments.
“To say the federal government has to do it itself, it will never happen,” Fauci told Raddatz. “Leaving the states alone on their own without any help, without any instructions, without resources, is going to be difficult. You have to have a combination of both.”
Elderly and first responders are waiting in line to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at the Lakes Regional Library on December 30, 2020 in Fort Myers, Florida.
Octavio Jones / Getty Images
Some progress so far offers a ‘little glimmer of hope’
The U.S. has now administered more than 4.2 million initial doses of coronavirus vaccines as of Saturday morning, the CDC reported. A whole lot of the doses have been handed out over the last few days.
A few hopes are that they have received 1.5 million doses in their arms in the last 72 hours, which is on average about 500,000 a day, ‘Fauci told Raddatz.
He estimated that all of the country’s priority groups – including health workers, nursing home residents, essential workers, elderly Americans and Americans with high-risk medical conditions – could be vaccinated by the end of March or beginning of April.
Around that time in the spring, he added, the U.S. may have a vaccine that I call an open season – namely, someone who wants a vaccine can get a vaccine. ‘This is in line with previous estimates by federal officials.
“If we do the kind of vaccine implementation I’m talking about from April, May, June, July, July and August, at least a million people a day and maybe more, by the time we end the summer and come to the autumn, we will.” herd immunity in about 75% to 80% of the population, Fauci said.
But some experts have called for vaccinations to increase further.
“For us to achieve 80% herd immunity through vaccination, it will take us 10 years at a rate of 1 million vaccines per week,” said Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore Health Commissioner, recently told CNN. “Or to put it another way: if we want to get there within six months, we have to do 3.5 million vaccinations a day.”