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President Biden may have raised hopes prematurely when he said he expected that in the spring any American wishing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 could get one.
Yet he didn’t go so far as to identify which month, leaving open the possibility that “spring” means at the dawn of summer, in mid-June. Nonetheless, the White House quickly corrected this expectation.
“Not everyone will – won’t be eligible this spring, as you all know, although the CDC continues to provide updated guidance,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. . “But [Mr. Biden] would certainly defer to health and medical experts and, of course, to Dr. Fauci’s advice on when we might be on the verge of achieving collective immunity. ”
The White House clarified that 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of Mr Biden’s presidency are still the official target, as originally planned, after Mr Biden expressed hope that 150 million COVID vaccines could take place in its first 100 days. And the 100 million in 100 days goal is one of the country’s top infectious disease experts, Dr Anthony Fauci, seems to agree it’s realistic. “Once you get started and get some momentum, I think we can hit 1 million a day or even more,” he told The Associated Press earlier this month.
At a million shots per day, it would take the remainder of 2021 to vaccinate about 70% of American adults. It could be in the range of herd immunity, the point at which the rate of disease transmission slows, although scientists are not yet sure what percentage of the population must be inoculated to achieve herd immunity to the disease. COVID-19.
The White House has yet to say when young Americans without pre-existing health issues who are not essential workers can expect to be vaccinated.
The administration took steps to speed up vaccine production, announcing Tuesday night that he plans to buy an additional 200 million The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses, which she hopes will be available this summer, although the 100-day goal of 100 million doses does not depend on the approval of new vaccines.
Experts in public health and medical supply chains say a number of factors will be decisive in speeding up vaccine delivery to the general population – essentially, adults under 65 who have no problems. underlying health and are not essential workers.
“Everyone has to recognize that going to 400 million doses of a vaccine that we didn’t have a year ago is going to take time,” said Dr Julie Swann, head of the industrial engineering department and systems at North Carolina State University. “I don’t expect the general public to have access to it in late spring unless we have several fortuitous events happening by then.”
The main elements involved in achieving the immunization goal are procurement, distribution and administration, says Prashant Yadav, senior researcher at the Center for Global Development and affiliate professor of technology and operations management at INSEAD. . And they are “just as important and not taken for granted,” he said.
Yadav believes vaccine production should run almost “perfectly” to keep up with demand, but still believes the vaccines could be available to the general public in May or early June. But March or April, he said, is “highly impractical”.
Dr Bruce Y. Lee, professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Public Policy and executive director of public health informatics, computation and operations research, told CBS News he is concerned about the “Multiple bottlenecks” in vaccine deployment. Distribution and administration were Slow down provided that.
Identify where the bottlenecks in the supply chain lie and reveal whether a spring time schedule is “attainable or ambitious,” he said.
“It’s not just the number of vaccines that matters,” Lee said. “It matters who gets them,” Lee said.
Residents could be vaccinated at a faster rate if states ignored prioritization guidelines, but doing so would be counterproductive to the goal of protecting the most vulnerable, Lee said. There have been anecdotes about the line cut by rich americans, and in other cases, people not on the highest priority lists receive injections due to pressure not to waste highly perishable doses.
“Because the reconstituted Pfizer vaccine must be used within hours or discarded, multiple doses were given to non-frontline healthcare workers so that the valuable vaccine was not thrown away,” the spokesperson said. of Redlands Community Hospital Nikyah Thomas-Pfeiffer in a statement. .
And keeping up with the rate of the million shots a day may become more difficult, said Lee and others, noting that vaccinations started with “easy to reach fruits” in places like hospitals and long-term care facilities. duration. As vaccine eligibility opens up more widely, some populations may be more difficult to reach, depending on where they live and their socioeconomic status. It will take more effort to reach U.S. residents who do not speak English or have regular access to health care, Lee noted.
State governments are starting to feel the pressure to vaccinate the least vulnerable populations, Lee said, in particular, from large employers who want to vaccinate their employees, so they can return to work safely.
The Biden administration must conduct its own examination of the bottlenecks in vaccine distribution, Lee said. It is starting to tackle that problem by announcing new vaccine allocation schedules this week that will give states more advance information about their vaccine shipments, allowing them to better plan their distribution.
The federal government can also get more people vaccinated faster by creating or supporting vaccination sites, said Yadav, which the Biden administration says is developing.
Swann said the administration of vaccines would be more efficient if each state had a website where people could register to get vaccinated, rather than going through local health departments. But there are currently only a handful of states with a centralized vaccination registration system or a waiting list, according to a recent review by the Wall Street Journal.
New Jersey has a statewide registration system. In California and New Jersey, residents can pre-register to be notified when it’s their turn, but that doesn’t necessarily put them in a queue to receive the vaccine. South Dakota does not have a statewide wait list, but it directs residents to local health care providers where they can find a wait list.
“Eventually, I think we’ll have enough vaccine for all Americans who want one, and for additional boosters if needed,” Swann said. “New processes take time, but the supply will increase.”
Alexander Tin contributed to this report.
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