Operation Warp Speed will miss the first distribution target it set out, Trump administration officials said last week, saying it was “slower if we get the vaccines from humans.”
Trump administration officials have promised to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020, meaning 40 million doses would be distributed by January 1st.
But General Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate vaccine development, said the government would have allocated only 20 million doses by January 1 – far less than promised.
“We have allocated 15.5 million doses of vaccine and we are on track to allocate another 4.5 to 5 million next week, which will bring us to 20 million doses of vaccine that were allocated to America before the end of the year, “Perna said in December. 23 briefing with reporters. “We will complete the deliveries in the first week of January.”
Perna’s remarks suggest that the Trump administration will only complete the delivery of half of its predicted vaccine estimate in the first week of January. State and local governments will then oversee the distribution of the vaccine.
It is an incredible retrenchment in ambition and scope for the effort, which has achieved unprecedented success in accelerating the development of vaccines but making delays in getting the shots into people’s arms.
And that’s because Trump administration officials have boasted about the availability of mass vaccines over a time frame that medical supply chain experts say is unrealistic.
In November, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, said that by the end of December, 40 million doses of the vaccine would be available – “enough to vaccinate about 20 million of our most vulnerable Americans.”
Since then, Azar and other top officials of the Trump administration have reiterated the estimate, while also emphasizing an unrealistic timeline for the widespread availability of the vaccine.
Azar said the vaccine would be as widely available by February as the flu shot, while Health Advice Minister HHS Brett Giroir said the majority of the population could be vaccinated by late spring.
These promises raise expectations that are impossible to meet with the incoming Biden administration. Officials at the lower level of Operation Warp Speed contradicted the rosy timeline of top officials.
Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, made similar remarks to Perna during the December 23 briefing and determined the Trump administration’s initial commitment.
On December 2, Slaoui said he was “confident” that the government could vaccinate 20 million Americans by December 31 – a task that requires 40 million doses.
“And at the end of February, we may have vaccinated a hundred million people, which is actually more or less as large as the significant population at risk, the elderly, health workers, first-class workers, people with comorbidity,” he added.
But on December 23 – less than three weeks later – Slaoui said that “the commitment we can make is to make the vaccine dose available.”
He added that “that commitment is being met”, but that it was “slower to ‘get arms in arms’ than we thought it would be.”
“The goal is not being met,” Slaoui said.
Cracks have demonstrated both in the ability of Operation Warp Speed to deliver the weekly cadence of the vaccine the Trump administration has promised to the states, as well as the ability of too many state and local public health departments to inject the shots quickly.
In the first week of distribution, states complained that its allocation had been reduced, and Pfizer, the manufacturer of one of the two vaccines currently available, claimed to have put millions of doses in its warehouse waiting for orders.
Separately, state health officials said they do not have the ability to disperse the shot quickly, especially when it comes to massive vaccinations planned for spring and summer.
President Trump on Sunday signed emergency legislation that allocated at least $ 4.5 billion to state and local public health departments to distribute the vaccine. It will help states meet demand for vaccines, although some experts say the lack of funding so far this week – coupled with the time it will take to distribute the money allocated by Congress – is already causing delays has.
Perna, the general of Operation Warp Speed, said some issues were due to the controls on the quality of the vaccines.
“We had to adjust our timelines,” Perna said.
A HHS spokesman did not return a request for comment.