Covid US: vaccines will NOT be available in pharmacies in mid-February

New CDC director Joe Biden said on Thursday that COVID-19 vaccines would not be as widely available as the flu vaccine by mid-February, a pledge that was made by the Secretary of Health and to Trump’s Human Services, Alex Azar, last month, and that the deployment will take significantly longer.

Speaking on Today, Dr Rochelle Walensky was unable to give a date when vaccines would be available in pharmacies and said the new administration needed to ‘rock the metal’ to pass them on. faster to Americans.

Until now, it was up to the states to distribute the vaccine themselves. Massachusetts says it will start putting vaccines in some drugstores next week, but it’s far from common in the United States.

Most states are still making their way into their first vaccine groups – over 65s and people with underlying health conditions.

There are already shortages and delays. California doesn’t think it will finish vaccinating this group until June. Every vaccination appointment in New York that is expected to take place between now and Sunday has also been postponed by a week.

The Biden administration has said the fight against COVID-19 is its top priority and the president has pledged to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.

They have made big promises to speed up vaccine distribution by launching large-scale vaccination sites in places like Yankee Stadium and hiring medical students, military personnel, retired doctors and nurses to distribute the vaccine. vaccines.

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Biden will also order manufacturers to produce syringes, needles, masks or anything else missing that could slow the effort under the Defense Production Act.

Officials say the Trump administration didn’t have a clear plan and had to start from square one.

Walensky on Thursday was unable to give a clear timeline on when the vaccine will be available at CVS and Walgreen stores across the country, but she said it would not be in February.

“Will it be in all the pharmacies in this country by then?” I do not think so.

And like I said very early on, I’ll tell you the truth here.

“I don’t think that at the end of February we will have vaccines in all pharmacies in this country.

“ We said 100 million doses in – the first in 100 days and we’re going to stick with that plan.

“But I also want to be very aware of the fact that after 100 days there are still a lot of Americans who need a vaccine.”

She said a key part of the plan will be to use the new vaccines that need to be approved.

Currently, only Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been approved in the United States.

AstraZeneca has been approved in the UK but not yet in America.

Johnson & Johnson are expected to review their vaccine data in the next “week”, according to Dr Anthony Fauci.

“The more vaccines we have FDA cleared, the better we will be,” Dr. Walensky said.

She also said they had started work on how to speed up vaccine production, but would not give a timeline for when it would start happening any faster.

“ There are many plans, as we think in the future, as to how we are going to get people vaccinated, ” she said, adding that they need to balance ‘the amount of vaccine that we have for the number of eligible people, then we don’t “I don’t have a vaccine on the shelves and I don’t see the footage of these long lines yet.

“ We have to make sure that there are enough vaccinators there, that we have mandated health care bodies, that we have military personnel in medicine, that we have retirees, medical and care students. nurses who are about to graduate, dentists and veterinarians, to be there to vaccinate the public, ”she said.

When asked if she knew when this would happen, she said: ‘We are working on answering questions. We are the second day in the driver’s seat.

“But we understand exactly – at the moment I think we still have vaccines on the shelves that we need to reach people.

Biden’s vaccination coordinator Bechara Choucair presented his plan on a call with reporters on Wednesday.

“First, we’re going to create as many places as possible for people to be vaccinated,” he said.

The surge to 100 million would still be below what many experts believe is necessary to achieve “herd immunity,” but the administration believes it will slow the spread significantly and start reducing infections.

“It’s an ambitious but achievable goal… but just the start,” Jeffrey Zients, Biden’s new COVID czar, said during a press call Wednesday.

An order would direct agencies “ to exercise all appropriate authorities ” – including the Defense Production Act – “ to expedite manufacturing, delivery and administration to fill shortages of equipment and supplies needed to respond to COVID-19 ”.

Another would increase FEMA reimbursement rates to help states respond. Another order aims to expand the supply of tests and improve access to testing – with the aim of getting people back to work and reopening schools.

Yet another would seek to ensure that drug studies “meet the needs of diverse populations”.

Larger studies are already looking to examine the effects on different minority groups. Some localities have already experienced disparities in the communities that receive the vaccine.

A decree to the education and health and services departments will order them to provide advice on reopening schools “so that national and local authorities have parameters to inform decision-making. The administration wants the majority of schools open in 100 days.

A new testing committee will be tasked with developing a “clear and unified approach” to testing.

The administration also plans to provide more information to the public, with regular briefings to public health officials, after the Trump administration is deployed, and then the withdrawal of the coronavirus task force briefings.

Zients said the team he oversees will seek to rebuild trust with the American people.