Although the 20 million target may have been too high to begin with, the holidays could have caused delays, some health experts said, and there could be a time lapse to report vaccinations.
Fauci warned against coming to a conclusion about the pace of vaccine deployment in such a short period of time, saying ‘we have just started’.
Although a lot of money and effort has been put into developing vaccines and distributing them to the countries, there seems to be less of how to actually administer them, public health experts have said.
“There seems to be an idea in Washington that you have all these public health people there. All you have to do is send out the vaccine,” said William Schaffner, a professor of infectious disease at Vanderbilt University. .
“I have flashbacks to what happened with the test,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a visiting professor of health policy and management at the Milken School of Public Health at George Washington University and a medical analyst at CNN, said.
“It’s the same: promises were initially made based on rosy projections. Everyone assumed there was a national strategy, as it turns out, was not.”
State and local health departments have already been stretched too much and “did not have the necessary resources to plan and implement the most ambitious vaccination program our country has ever undertaken,” Wen said.
Those departments have run all the other aspects of pandemic operations, such as testing, contact tracing, public education, data tracing, and now you are adding this huge responsibility to this responsibility, which is why they have been saying for months that they need additional support. “
In addition, the fact that “public health infrastructure in the United States has been shrinking for about 15-20 years,” Schaffner said.
How to stimulate vaccinations
The federal government can do several things to speed up the vaccination process, Wen said, including a sense of urgency and ‘(make) it clear that this is a wartime mobilization. It requires a national effort that is 24/7, no excuses there. “
Schaffner agreed.
“You can get vaccinated on Saturdays, you can get vaccinated on Sundays, you can start at 6 in the morning,” Schaffner said. “You can go up to 8 or 9 o’clock at night. The more you can vaccinate, the better.”
Second, Wen said, the government can set targets, determine what civil servants and local officials need to achieve the targets and help them get what they need.
And the government can help streamline the process, vaccinate centers and set up mass centers.
“Everything that can be done by the federal government, they have to do, specifically staff,” Wen said. “Why should 50 states try to figure out how to recruit all of them?”
Mass vaccination clinics – for example in parking lots – would be one way to finally get the speed to get everyone vaccinated, said LJ Tan, the chief strategy officer of the Immunization Action Coalition, who is working to increase the vaccination rate.
With flu, “we know if you do a very well-run clinic for mass immunization, you can easily clear up 20,000 vaccines a day,” Tan said. The rate for the coronavirus vaccine would not be as high due to the waiting time required to give the vaccine to make sure there is no allergic reaction, he said.
Doubt among health workers
But the real key to solving the problem, Schaffner said, is communication.
“There was an underestimation of how much communication work it will take to get people who are hesitant into the fold and get them vaccinated,” Schaffner said. ‘Even my good friends and dear friends at the CDC deeply underestimated the degree. of vaccination hesitation among people working in the healthcare environment. “
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center, realizing that this would be a problem, began an educational program four to six weeks before the vaccine was delivered, Schaffner said, including videos, social media and Q&A sessions.
“We could see the proverbial needle moving in the direction of acceptance,” Schaffner said.
In Kentucky, “more than 30% of those eligible are not vaccinated if offered,” the state health commissioner said Thursday.
In nursing homes, there have been reports that nursing assistants – not residents – are reluctant to be vaccinated, Tan said.
“We need to figure out ways to go in and help them and educate the nursing assistants,” Tan said. “It is a safe and effective vaccine.”
Part of the reason the rollout was slow has to do with the population recommended to receive the first vaccine: seniors in long-term care facilities and health care workers, Tan said.
In places like California, where virus cases are skyrocketing and hospitalization rates are overwhelming, facilities are prudent to give shots to health workers who could then contract fever – one of the possible side effects of the vaccine, but also a symptom of Covid-19 – what they will like about the work, even if it is for a short time, when hospitals need all the help.
“You can imagine that healthcare systems, with the increase in patients and the full availability of their staff required, are going to be much more deliberate with the way they vaccinate their staff,” Tan said. “You’re not going to vaccinate everyone at once,” or even half of it at the same time.
“Just put it to work,” said the surgeon-general.
“Get the vaccines where they’re going to be taken,” Adams told NBC’s “Today” on Tuesday. “We don’t have to recreate the wheel, we just have to get it rolling.”
Some states have begun to move even faster to expand the pool of those eligible for a vaccine, but this has created its own problems. In Florida, after 65-year-olds and older were allowed to take the chance, people stood in line for hours and the supplies were quickly depleted.
Elected President Joe Biden has set an aggressive goal of 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office. It will vaccinate 50 million people, because immunization requires two separate doses for each person.
It’s a break with the Trump administration to halt half of U.S. vaccine production to ensure second doses are available.
Although this is a risky strategy, as both vaccines now approved in the US require two doses, administered at specific intervals, a transitional official said the Biden team believes vaccine manufacturers will be able to get enough second doses in a timely manner to produce; Biden’s team plans to use the Defense Act to manufacture vaccines and other materials.
Biden said he would run federal management and support vaccination centers across the country with the help of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the CDC, the military and the National Guard.
CNN’s Jacqueline Howard, Jen Christensen and Sara Murray contributed to this report.