Carla K. Johnson and Nicky Forster did some counter-intuitive reporting for the Associated Press this morning, looking at figures that suggest some countries that have tried the fastest to get vaccinations have finally had a slower rollout of vaccines.
How is this possible? The explanation, as experts see it, is that the rapid expansion of suitability in states such as South Carolina and Florida caused an increase in demand that was too great to handle, and led to serious disorder. Vaccination stocks were inadequate or unpredictable, websites crashed and phone lines crashed, spreading confusion, frustration and resignation among many people. They have now vaccinated smaller sections of their population than those who have moved more slowly and methodically, such as Hawaii and Connecticut.
“The infrastructure was just not ready. It hit back a bit, ‘said dr. Rebecca Wurtz, an infectious disease physician and health data specialist at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, said. She added: “In a hurry to please everyone, governors have frustrated little and much.”
The findings could contain an important lesson for the country’s governors, many of which have announced dramatic expansions in recent days after being challenged by President Joe Biden to be eligible for adult by May 1st. “
If you are more purposeful and more focused, you can do a better job, ”said Sema Sgaier, executive director of Surgo Ventures, a nonprofit health data organization that conducted the analysis in collaboration with the Associated Press. . “You can open it if you have the infrastructure to vaccinate all the people quickly.”
“It got a little chaotic,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, medical chief of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said. “We created a lot more demand than there was. This stressed the system and it may have left the system less efficient. ”
According to Plescia, the analysis suggests that “a more methodical, measured, judicious, priority-based approach, despite the perception of people, can actually be just as effective or efficient as opening things up and making them available to more people.”
In retrospect, health workers and nursing home residents were the easy groups to vaccinate. Doses could be given to them where they lived and worked.
“We knew where they were and we knew who they were,” Wurtz said. Once states went beyond the populations, it became more difficult to find the right people.