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Federal officials pledged earlier this week to stop stockpiling second doses of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines, and instead use them to get more people to their first vaccines.
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The statement prompted many states to open up vaccine distribution to more of the public this week.
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But a new report from the Washington Post says the government has not actually withheld any vaccines for the second doses, and they have already been sent.
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As a result, many states will not receive additional vaccines on their next shipments to meet the higher demand.
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America’s vaccine cabinets are empty.
Federal officials – who pledged on Tuesday that they were starting to distribute more doses of COVID-19 vaccines to states – actually have no surplus to distribute, according to an explosive new report from the Washington Post.
The government said it had previously stored more than 50% of the vaccine inventory, saving enough second doses of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that anyone who received one would be in. able to get their second callback on time, no matter what. (Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are given in two doses, given three or four weeks apart.)
But, in fact, the Trump administration was “already taking second doses straight off the production line,” according to the Post report.
Read more: How pharmaceutical giant Pfizer partnered with little-known biotechnology to develop the first licensed coronavirus vaccine in record time
This take-out strategy – shipping vaccine doses as quickly as they were manufactured – began in December for Pfizer’s vaccine, and the same has been true for Moderna’s vaccines since last weekend, according to the Post.
A failing stock
After President-elect Biden promised last Friday that his administration would begin releasing all available vaccine doses when he took office next week, the Trump administration also announced that it was pivoting to the same plan.
The federal government also appeared to suggest that by releasing more doses this way, the country would be able to immunize more people. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday recommended that each state expand its vaccine distribution settings to include all people 65 years of age and older, as well as younger people with co-morbidities.
“We have had so much success with quality, predictable manufacturing and almost flawless distribution of the vaccine,” Azar told ABC on Tuesday. “We had retained the second doses as a safety stock. We now believe that our manufacturing is predictable enough that we can make sure that the second doses are available for people from the current production, so everything is now available.
This is something that many public health experts have been suggesting for some time now.
“We are in a pandemic, where things are going badly,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of public health at Brown University told Insider. “We can make hedges that say we should withhold certain doses, but let’s assume our production isn’t going to completely collapse for months and months.”
But states are already complaining about not having enough vaccines, and without more vaccines, it’s unclear how their distribution can expand.
States, which request more vaccines, have been informed that the stock is empty
At least nine state governors, desperate to get more shots in the arms of their citizens, also sent a letter to Washington last week, saying “our states and residents need more vaccines now.”
“According to publicly released information, the federal government currently has more than 50% of currently produced vaccines withheld by the administration for unknown reasons,” the letter said, citing media reports.
But state and federal officials who have been made aware of plans to distribute vaccine doses now tell the Washington Post that there is no such surplus and that most vaccine allocations to states next week will be stable.
One notable exception is Connecticut, a state that has vaccinated its citizens in one of the nation’s fastest clips so far. Governor of Connecticut Ned Lamont tweeted Thursday that his state will receive 50,000 additional doses next week, “as a reward for being among the fastest states” to vaccinate.
Nearly 30 million vaccines distributed, but less than 10 million went to arms
Operation Warp Speed said Thursday that nearly 30 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed to states so far. But shots in boxes do not equate to vaccinations in weapons.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than 10 million American adults have started receiving their vaccines since vaccinations began in mid-December.
“It’s a crisis,” Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine who is also developing a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine, told Insider.
“Our only hope now – given how quickly this virus is accelerating and killing 4,000 a day – is that we need to vaccinate the American people at the rate of 1 to 2 million a day for every day by the end of the day. end of August., and we’re not even close. “
The US Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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