Inconsistent supply is biggest challenge, says NJ Hospital CEO



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Holy Name Medical Center CEO Michael Maron told CNBC on Tuesday that his New Jersey hospital’s Covid vaccination efforts had been hampered by a constant problem: inconsistent availability.

“The biggest challenge we are facing right now is the vaccine supply. We just can’t get it, and we can’t get it on a reliable path. It’s very difficult,” he said. said Maron on “Power Lunch”.

“One week we will have Pfizer, next week we will have Moderna,” he added, referring to the manufacturers of the two vaccines who have received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. “We never really know how much of this is going to happen, whether it’s a thousand doses … or two thousand or more.”

So far, Maron said Holy Name Medical Center – located in Teaneck, near New York City – has administered around 5,000 doses of the vaccine. However, Maron said the hospital has the capacity to deliver 3,000 doses per day, in part thanks to a partnership he established with Teaneck to create a vaccination site at a community center.

On Monday, 570 residents received the vaccine at the site, according to an article on the official Teaneck website. But due to the “lack of available vaccines,” township manager Dean Kazinci wrote, the site was closed on Tuesday – illustrating the supply challenges Maron spoke of.

“Holy Name Medical Center is awaiting delivery of additional trays of the vaccine which should arrive midweek. We will post additional information as it becomes available,” Kazinci wrote.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Holy Name website has also been telling visitors that the hospital is not scheduling an appointment for the Covid vaccination “at this time” due to availability constraints.

The deployment of Covid vaccines in the United States has proceeded at a slower pace than officials had hoped. About 12.3 million doses were administered on Friday, according to the latest available data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 31.2 million doses distributed.

President-elect Joe Biden, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, has pledged to speed up the vaccine rollout by pledging to deliver 100 million doses in 100 days. On Sunday, Biden’s choice to lead the CDC, Dr Rochelle Walensky, said she believed the United States would have an adequate supply of vaccines to meet the goal.

“It’s going to be a big boost, but we’ve got enough to do it,” Walensky said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”.

Covid hospitalizations

While Covid vaccinations are essential to limit the impact of the disease, Maron warned that the coronavirus outbreak in the United States was a current threat. On Tuesday, the death toll in the country from Covid eclipsed 400,000, just over a month after recording 300,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Maron said Covid hospitalizations at Holy Name Medical Center are not at levels seen earlier in the pandemic, such as in March and April. The hospital also offers better treatments for patients, he said. Nonetheless, he said a worrying aspect was the age of patients hospitalized for the disease.

“It’s not who you would think,” Maron said. “These are mostly people between 45 and 65, so it’s not the frail elderly that everyone has been talking about. These are the ones who are on ventilators, so that worries us a bit.

He said the cause of hospitalizations among young U.S. residents was unclear. “For us here in the industry, it’s a reminder that it’s still a very, very serious and deadly virus. We shouldn’t take it lightly.”

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