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As California launches massive COVID-19 vaccination sites to speed up inoculations, public health officials are increasingly concerned that the supply of doses may dry up.
State and local officials complained on Friday that the rush sparked by the federal government’s recommendation to add people 65 and older to vaccine eligibility lists was not accompanied by an increase in vaccine eligibility. expeditions.
This could add to an already confusing and chaotic vaccine rollout and limit the number of people who can be vaccinated in California, as the state appears to be gaining traction.
California has administered nearly 1.2 million vaccines, or about 40 percent of the 3 million doses received, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday. That’s a significant increase since Monday, when the state administered around 783,000 doses, or less than a third of the 2.5 million available doses.
But Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Friday that some pharmacies that have reportedly received more vaccine shipments this week have to wait a week, “because the national supply is just not coming.” Jeff Gorell, a deputy mayor, said Thursday the city would receive 46,000 doses for its vaccination sites over the next few days, but city officials “don’t know what the world will look like after Wednesday.”
“It’s not a problem with the state, it’s not a problem here locally,” Garcetti said. “We just don’t have the supply.”
U.S. governors have said they expect vaccine shipments to increase sharply, based on assurances from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Operation Warp Speed, the initiative of the U.S. Trump administration aiming to collect vaccines en masse. Instead, Newsom said on Friday that officials “have denied this, or for some reason are unable to deliver.
Trump administration officials had assured U.S. governors that they would soon release doses from a stockpile of vaccines to help states ramp up vaccination efforts. The Washington Post reported on Friday that stocks are already depleted and states will not receive additional shipments, slowing vaccination programs across the country.
An HHS spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
President-elect Joe Biden echoed these concerns, criticizing the US vaccine rollout on Friday as “a dismal failure to date.”
A lack of clear information from the White House means that state and local authorities have not been able to make appropriate plans because they don’t know how many doses they can expect or when they can. expect it, Biden said. He said there were “tens of millions of doses” unused in freezers.
Biden said his goal is for the United States to administer 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days on duty, including at community vaccination centers and federally-backed mobile clinics.
This type of effort will require a massive, reliable flow of doses and clear communication with local officials trying to determine the number of appointments to schedule.
Los Angeles County officials estimate that by next week they will be able to administer more than 40,000 doses per day at vaccination sites that include Dodger Stadium, five county-run mega-sites – including Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Pomona Fairplex – and a handful of smaller clinics.
Newsom’s handling of the rollout also drew criticism, including its announcement that people 65 and over would be given priority for vaccinations – creating mass confusion in counties where officials were not ready to administer vaccines .
Officials have been inundated with calls from residents 65 and older who want the vaccine, Los Angeles County supervisor Kathryn Barger said. But the county won’t start the next round of gunfire until health workers are vaccinated.
The county does not stockpile doses, Barger said, but needs a promise from state and federal governments that enough doses will arrive for vaccination sites to function properly.
“People are scared,” Barger said. “That’s really what I get from people calling. People are scared.
Last week, Newsom sent a letter to the governors of seven other states – including New York, Illinois and Michigan – to Azar and the leader of Operation Warp Speed asking the federal government to release doses of a federal stock so that states can speed up their vaccinations.
This week, in a phone call with Azar and Vice President Mike Pence, governors were told those doses would be coming soon, Newsom said. Health officials have started planning for a surge in supply – which no longer appears to be coming, he said.
The Biden administration has promised to provide more transparency on the arrival of doses, Newsom said, which “helps us with our planning goal. It allows faster and more efficient throughput, more capacity. ”
Public officials across the United States have increasingly criticized the Trump administration, saying the recommendation to vaccinate the elderly would lead to shortages unless more doses are released.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday radio interview according to which the city had vaccinated 125,000 people in four days, but that it had received a “very paltry” shipment of 100,000 doses per week from the federal government. The city will run out of vaccine next week unless shipments increase, he said.
One of New York’s largest hospitals, the Mt. Sinai Health System, canceled immunization appointments this week because they did not have enough doses.
“There aren’t enough vaccines to keep up with the first dates, let alone the second,” de Blasio said.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown said on twitter that states will not receive an increase in national stock shipments next week, as previously promised, “because there is no federal reserve of doses.”
Vaccine makers, meanwhile, say production is holding steady. Pfizer said on Friday it was ready to release millions of doses every day.
“Pfizer is confident in our ability to deliver 200 million doses of our vaccine to the US government by July 31,” Pfizer spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said via email.
In Santa Clara County, authorities have struggled to determine what vaccine providers in their own county are doing, or how much they have on hand, county attorney James Williams said.
Some vaccine vendors, like CVS, receive their vaccine shipments directly from the federal government, Williams said. The state distributes certain doses to entities operating in multiple counties, including Kaiser Hospitals and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, a leading medical group in the Bay Area.
These entities are responsible for vaccinating the majority of Santa Clara County, but the county is not sure what they are doing, Williams said.
“We have less information than you do,” said Dr. Howard Mandel, chairman of the LA City Health Commission, which acts as an advisory board to city council and the mayor. A lack of communication from the county makes it difficult for the commission to do its job, and repeated requests for updates and information often go unanswered, he said.
The immunization pipeline begins at the national level, where federal officials divide the doses for each state, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, California Secretary of Health and Human Services. Next, states allocate the doses to counties, local health authorities, and other entities such as hospitals and penitentiary systems, and then the doses are allocated to providers such as pharmacies and clinics.
Garcetti and three dozen other major city mayors are calling for less paperwork and more local control. In a letter this week, mayors urged Biden to distribute doses directly to cities, saying: “We must be agile and fill the gaps specific to each region.”
Vaccine distributors said they were ready to deliver more doses, but were beholden to the government’s allocation rules.
Kaiser Permanente, of Southern California, “is preparing for expanded eligibility” to include people 65 years and older, but to achieve this, “depends on access to adequate supplies of vaccines, which we think is coming, ”said Dr Nancy Gin, Regional Director of Quality and Clinical Analysis.
The Albertsons supermarket chain, which will administer vaccines at its retail pharmacies, said it was training more than 500 pharmacy technicians to help them get vaccinated and the vaccines “came out the door” as soon as they arrived.
“The regulating factor is really the number of vaccines that are allocated to us,” said Willem Henning, director of pharmacy at Albertsons. “If we got more vaccines, we could probably do several hundred more each week.”
Times editors Jaclyn Cosgrove and Colleen Shalby contributed to this report.
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