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When a South Florida hospital chain announced this month that it had 12,000 open appointments for Covid-19 vaccinations, Anari Patel jumped at the chance. With a doctor’s note in hand to confirm that she was in a high-risk group, she spent three hours browsing an online planning website.
It worked and she got a date for February 19th. “It was like winning the jackpot,” she says.
But the price evaporated a few days later. Patel said she received a text message this week from the hospital chain, Baptist Health South Florida, saying she did not have enough supplies. This canceled not only her date, but also all appointments for the first shots from Wednesday.
The deployment of vaccines in the United States has not been perfect, but states and cities have been working to speed up distribution and make sure vaccines don’t expire. Now they are concerned that the cast will overtake the offer. Some health care providers and cities say they run out of doses days after receiving their weekly allowance, a change from a few weeks ago when local vaccinators struggled to keep up with the supplies they needed. ‘they were receiving.
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Covid-19 vaccines were still going to be in short supply after receiving US approval for emergency use only last month, but patients, hospitals and local officials say even the meager allocation has been unpredictable .
San Francisco said this week that the supply its city health department received on Tuesday could be wiped out by the end of Thursday, while New York City warned that its weekly supply may also not last. until the weekend.
“This country is powerful. I don’t know why we’re like this, ”said Patel, 45, who suffers from diabetes, a high-risk disease. She said she knew there was a shortage of doses across the country, but based on the number of appointments available, “we thought they had the numbers.”
Baptist Health South Florida did not respond to questions about what had happened to its supply and did not notify patients of the cancellations, informing them on Tuesday that all appointments for Wednesday or later were void.
“Due to COVID-19 vaccine supply constraints, we must suspend all first dose vaccinations for the community,” the health system said in a statement posted on Facebook.
“All appointments booked for January 20 and all dates after that are now canceled, and we are not making any new appointments,” he said. Second dose appointments were not affected, he said.
While President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday promised an imminent reshuffle in federal coordination of vaccine deployment, states and cities are unlikely to be able to count on an immediate increase in supply. The number of vaccine doses shipped has remained relatively stable since the end of December.
Vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are expected to ship around 8.6 million doses next week, split evenly between those reserved for first injections and second injections, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Beyond next week, states haven’t had a good idea of what to expect, said Dr Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territory Health Officials. .
“They didn’t receive any kind of forecast. They are all a bit in the dark about it, ”he said. State and territory officials are investigating whether federal officials have taken as much supply as possible, he added.
Bergen County, New Jersey, the state’s most populous county, is expected to run out of vaccine doses on Saturday, despite sending 2,000 doses this week, NBC New York reported.
In San Francisco, Dr Grant Colfax, the city’s health director, said the city’s dose allocation has gone up and down, with 12,000 doses last week but only 1,775 doses this week.
“This unreliable source makes planning very difficult, and it’s one of the main reasons we have to run out of vaccine,” he said, warning that it could happen on Thursday.
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Part of the supply disruption was a pause in the use of a batch of vaccine doses made by Moderna after some people who received them were treated for possible allergic reactions, Colfax said. The hiatus has since been lifted, giving the state supply a temporary boost.
The city is expected to open three new mass vaccination sites in the coming days, despite the instability of supply. The Mayor of London Breed said in a briefing that these plans are continuing as the sites will also be supplied by private healthcare providers, who receive a separate California allowance from the city’s health department allowance.
“As we move forward, we just need more vaccines,” she said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday the city was receiving 53,000 doses in its resupply this week, which, combined with last week’s unused doses, would be enough to last Thursday or Friday.
“We will literally have nothing more to give,” he said in a briefing, warning that immunization appointments could be canceled as a result.
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