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Today, in separate press conferences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and members of Operation Warp Speed addressed the two main obstacles facing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the United States: slow distribution and safety concerns.
Since the vaccines were approved for emergency use in mid-December, most states have focused on immunizing recommended priority groups: health workers and residents of long-term care facilities. But no state has yet fully utilized its current vaccine allocation.
“We cannot let perfection be the enemy of good,” said Alex Azar, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, during an Operation Warp Speed press briefing on the deployment. vaccines. “Priority recommendations are only recommendations, they should never prevent being shot in the arms.”
Azar said the slow start was in part due to when vaccines arrived during the winter break. But he also said governors need to be more aggressive in distributing vaccines.
“We shouldn’t be overly prescriptive,” he said, explaining that if people in priority groups were offered the vaccine and doses remained, governors should quickly start offering the vaccine to the elderly. over 70 or 65, or those at risk of hospitalization with severe COVID-19.
Separately, Moncef Slaoui, PhD, Chief Scientific Advisor of Operation Warp Speed, confirmed that he will continue to be part of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team and will continue to consult on vaccine developments. He also said he expected two new vaccine candidates, one from Johnson & Johnson and one from AstraZeneca, to apply for emergency use authorization in the coming weeks.
The candidate Johnson & Johnson, notable for requiring a single dose, is expected to be filed by the end of the month, and the AstraZeneca vaccine (already in use in the UK) is expected to be filed in the first week of March, a declared Slaoui.
Yesterday, the CDC’s COVID-19 tracker showed that 17,020,575 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were distributed in the United States and 4,836,469 doses were administered. Operation Warp Speed officials said today they expect 20 million doses of each of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to be distributed by the end of the month.
Vaccine-related anaphylaxis
Today, Nancy Messonnier, MD, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that while COVID-19 vaccines are considered extremely safe, there is a risk of anaphylaxis.—A severe allergic reaction—at a rate of 11.1 per 1 million doses administered based on events during the first 3 weeks of vaccination.
By comparison, the seasonal influenza vaccine carries a risk of 1.3 anaphylactic events per 1 million doses.
“The risk of poor outcomes from COVID is even more than a risk from the vaccine, and luckily we know how to treat anaphylaxis,” Messonnier said.
In today Weekly report on morbidity and mortality, CDC describes 21 events of anaphylaxis linked to COVID-19 vaccinations. The median age of the patients was 40 years and the mean time between vaccine injection and allergic reaction was 13 minutes. Seventeen of the 21 patients had a known allergy to drugs, foods or insects.
“There was no geographic clustering of cases,” said Messonnier, who also said anaphylaxis had been observed with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. She also said that anyone who suffers from an allergic reaction to the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine should not be given the second dose.
Messonnier also said these events had not changed plans for vaccine distribution. “We want to be sure that any vaccine administration site is prepared with staff who must know what to do if a patient has anaphylaxis.” Nineteen of the 21 patients received epinephrine on site, and although all patients recovered, some required hospitalization.
Messonnier answered several questions about the reluctance to be vaccinated and said she was disappointed to learn that healthcare workers had refused the vaccines.
In related news, CVS Health and Walgreens said they plan to complete the first round of nursing home and assisted living vaccinations by January 25, but reported lower usage than expected staff.
Yesterday, only 429,000 doses of the 3.2 million doses allocated under the federal pharmaceutical partnership for long-term care programs had been administered. A federal partnership with retail pharmacies has been a cornerstone of Operation Warp Speed’s plan to widely distribute the vaccine to Americans. According to Politico, the White House now estimates that 3,000 to 6,000 pharmacies could begin administering COVID-19 injections by the end of January.
Arizona, California report worsening surges
Arizona and California are reporting their third and worst outbreak of the novel coronavirus, with just 136 of Arizona’s 1,800 intensive care unit beds available. In the first week of 2021, the state averages more than 8,000 new cases a day, more than double the rate seen last summer.
In California, particularly in the Los Angeles metro area, hospitals are rapidly reaching capacity, with 8,000 people in Los Angeles County currently hospitalized. Eleven thousand deaths have been reported in Los Angeles County since the start of the pandemic.
Overall, the United States records an average of 200,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day, bringing the epidemic’s total to 2,201,638 cases, including 359,593 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard.
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