WASHINGTON – Before an increase in available vaccines takes place in the next month, the Biden government is taking control of an increasing number of doses and bypassing state programs in an effort to get shots at black, Latino and low-income communities.
But after less than five weeks of reviewing the system they inherited from the Trump administration, the Biden plan to use pharmacies and federal mass vaccination sites could be tested by a new dose dose.
“There’s a lot of untapped capacity out there,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at New York University who advised the Biden transition. “I think there is great potential to be sharpened by the retail pharmacies. It has been much more focused so far, but once the supply is open, they will target the populations that are the most dangerous, but also widen them more broadly.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday marked the 50 millionth vaccine with an event in the White House, which includes a four-person application for four people – a teacher, a grocery store manager, an EMT and a firefighter.
“What I’ll tell the American people is this: if – if – the FDA approves the use of this new vaccine, we have a plan to carry it out as soon as Johnson & Johnson can make it, “Biden said. “We will use every conceivable way to expand the production of the vaccine, and we will progress even faster with overall vaccines in March.”
Pfizer and Moderna have stepped up production and Johnson & Johnson are on track to approve the FDA’s state of emergency for their single-dose vaccine over the weekend – after which the drugmaker said it would ship 20 million doses to the US market within weeks . .
If the manufacturers meet their forecasts, the US will have enough doses to vaccinate 4 million people a day by the end of March, compared to the current rate of about 1.5 million shots a day.
The next test for the Biden government is whether it can successfully ensure that the doses fall into the arms of people at the increased rate of the manufacturers, and can achieve the goal of ensuring that the communities hardest hit do not lag behind. not.
The US also wants to avoid problems like those in other countries, such as Germany, which on Wednesday acknowledged that 1 million doses are stored because people are reluctant to be vaccinated.
Unlike the Trump administration, which allocated vaccine doses based on their population size and left it to local officials to decide how to erase the shots, the new government led more doses to community health centers and ran federal mass vaccination centers. and retail pharmacies specifically targeting minority and low-income communities, administrative officials said.
So far, only 9 percent of those who received the vaccine were Spanish and 6 percent were black, according to CDC data. Hispanics make up 19 percent of the total U.S. population, and blacks 13 percent.
Even among health workers, the first group to receive the vaccine, whites were excessively vaccinated more than blacks and Hispanics, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
To try to reverse the trend, the federal government this month began sending doses of vaccinations directly to retail pharmacies, with the initial locations chosen for their ability to reach ‘socially vulnerable communities,’ “said Covid Jeffrey Zients. 19-Coordinator of Government, said. Last week, 2 million doses went directly to pharmacies, while 13.5 million went to the states.
Walgreens said it would begin receiving a weekly allocation of about 500,000 vaccine doses per week, with about half of it being identified in the federal government as “medically underserved areas” and areas with socially vulnerable populations, a Walgreens spokesman said. said.
Once pharmacies have been used to target low-income areas, delivery to retailers is expected to increase nationally once photos are available again. Albertson’s grocery store, for example, said it has the capacity to administer 150,000 doses a day and handle about 90 percent more supplies than he received. CVS said its 10,000 stores have the capacity to deliver 5 to 6 million shots per week, but they now only receive 500,000 doses per week.
Part of the challenge, as more doses run out, is to help people figure out which pharmacy has doses and how people can get appointments. The CDC works with other healthcare providers on Vaccinefinder.org, a website where people can enter their zip code and see where shots are available.
The website was created by Boston Children’s Hospital to help families find flu shots, but has been converted into a Covid-19 vaccine that retrieves data directly from pharmacies. It currently offers information in only four states.
Administration officials said this month that they would send 1 million doses of vaccine directly to 250 federal community health centers, serving hard-to-reach groups such as the homeless, migrant workers and residents of public housing.
The administration has also set up vaccination centers in largely minority neighborhoods in Oakland, California and Los Angeles, each delivering more than 4,000 shots a day that come directly from the vaccine’s federal stock. It is planned to open four additional federal vaccination sites in Florida over the next two weeks – near Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville – with large populations of Black and Latino residents.
“The selection of all of these sites is based on a CDC, FEMA framework, designed to target those most vulnerable,” White House White House Advisor Syitt said in a statement. of the locations. “The goal is to start vaccination sites that use processes and are in places that promote equity.”
And he acknowledged that in some cases, people from outside the community were planning appointments, Slavitt said.
“People from outside these communities – outside the hard-hit communities – come in, make appointments and often take some of the doses, which we should not be surprised about – it happens in a shortage,” Slavitt said during a press conference. briefing last week. “But we need to respond to it because we are deliberately setting up both websites that are conveniently located in these communities.”
On a vaccine opening this week in the Dallas’ Fair Park, which is being opened by military and federal officials and targeted at minority neighborhoods, only about 18,000 residents registered in the appropriate zip codes for the vaccine as of Monday – 3,000 less than the total number of FEMAs could be vaccinated in a week, reports The Dallas Morning News.
Slavitt said the federal government is working on ways to improve the reservation system for appointments and other issues that could become obstacles for people living in those communities, such as transportation and limited hours for appointments.
States have also complained about a lack of coordination as the federal government takes on a stronger role, according to a two-group group of governors who sent a letter to the government this month.
The governors said that some pharmacies, due to a lack of communication, had received doses from both the state and the federal government.
“If the federal government distributes to the same entities independently of the states without coordination and consultation by the state, redundancy and inefficiency could very well follow,” the letter reads.