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For residents keen to get vaccinated and possibly return to normal life, a bigger bottleneck could be Massachusetts’ struggle to tame the formidable logistics of mass vaccination. So far, less than half of the 1,108,975 doses of Pfizer and Moderna shipped to the state have been injected, according to federal data updated Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’re only using half of what we’ve received,” said David Williams, president of Health Business Group, a Boston-based management consulting firm. “It’s no excuse to say because supplies are slow, we can just sit down. We should assume that there will be more supply, and we owe it to the citizens of Massachusetts to be ready when the time comes.
With the potential addition of new vaccines, from Johnson & Johnson and others, some analysts predict that the United States may have enough doses to vaccinate nearly everyone by September 30. This roughly matches Biden’s stated goal of fully vaccinating 300 million Americans by the end of the summer.
Governor Charlie Baker did not commit to a specific timeline to complete the program; in fact, Baker’s three-phase plan only runs until June. “As the federal vaccine distribution program shifts into high gear over the next few months,” he said in his State of the Commonwealth Address this week, “anyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one in. a site near them. “
But as complaints about the state’s hesitant deployment have escalated, authorities are opening dozens of new injection sites, including seven mass vaccination sites, to accelerate the state’s progress. The expansion comes as much larger populations become eligible for vaccines, including the elderly, essential workers, and residents with chronic health conditions. About 1 million residents are now eligible for reservations, the governor said.
Baker said vaccination sites will have the capacity to deliver 300,000 doses per week by mid-February, although this is far away more than the state expects to receive from the federal government in the coming weeks.
Already there are signs of shortages at new vaccination sites even as hospitals and pharmacies have hundreds of thousands of unused doses.
Legions of residents over 75 were unable to make vaccine appointments thanks to a cobbled together patchwork system on a state website on Wednesday, the day registration began. And doctors’ offices said they had no vaccines to administer. Atrius Health, a network of more than 700 physicians, emailed patients saying they “haven’t received enough vaccines from the state yet and we can’t start scheduling our patients to. 75 years and over.
Dr Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which helped develop the experimental Johnson & Johnson vaccine, said the shortages could continue for some time.
“The short-term future of our country in the coming weeks will be extremely difficult” because there are not enough vaccine doses available to meet national demand, Barouch told the Network of Excellence in Health Innovation during a webinar on Wednesday.
But he was optimistic that more doses would come from more drug companies soon after, and said “the long-term future is bright.” With two vaccines already created and approved for emergency use in less than a year, he added, vaccine development for COVID-19 “is proceeding faster than for any pathogen in the world. ‘history.
Biden administration officials are negotiating to buy an additional 200 million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. They are also awaiting the results, expected early next week, of the large-scale clinical trial of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Both developments could speed up the flow of COVID-19 vaccines to Massachusetts and other states.
An industry observer wondered if the United States would even need additional doses of Pfizer and Moderna if the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is cleared for emergency use next month.
“J&J claims to have a large production capacity. We could use that, ”said Alan Carr, analyst at Needham & Co.
The U.S. government has pledged to purchase 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as part of a billion dollar deal involving the federal Operation Warp Speed program. The government has the option to purchase an additional 200 million doses under a separate agreement. To date, it has been agreed to purchase 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 200 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Taken together, the government has purchased or has the ability to purchase enough COVID vaccines to immunize 500 million people, far more than the entire U.S. population. Scientists estimate that 80 to 90 percent of American adults would need to be vaccinated – about 300 million people – to beat the virus by obtaining what’s called “herd immunity.”
But uncertainties remain. No one knows what the results of the Johnson & Johnson trial will show. And there is no guarantee of success: On Monday, another drug giant, Merck, halted work on its own COVID-19 vaccine, citing inadequate immune responses.
A potential fourth vaccine could also be on the horizon, according to Biden’s new White House working group on COVID-19. During its first press briefing on Wednesday, the committee said pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford would likely provide the results of an advanced U.S. trial of the two-dose vaccine in March.
For states, the challenge remains to effectively administer the doses of vaccine they receive. So far, the bulk of shipments to Massachusetts have gone to hospitals and drug companies that have run vaccination clinics in long-term care facilities. But hundreds of thousands of vials remain in the freezers. An unknown number has been reserved as a second dose for people who have had their first injection.
Starting next week, when the second phase of the immunization program kicks off, shipments will be channeled to more locations – some managed by contractors such as CIC Health and others by local public health agencies – and more residents will require vaccines.
The task will not only be to ensure that there are enough vaccines, but also to hire enough vaccinators and to make the sites accessible. residents, including those in low-income communities.
Robert Weisman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter @GlobeRobW. Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at [email protected].
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