Millions of doses of US vaccines lie on ice, questioning 2020 target

(Reuters) – Millions of COVID-19 vaccines go unused in US hospitals and elsewhere a week after the mass vaccination campaign began, questioning the government’s target of 20 million vaccines this month.

As of Wednesday morning, only 1 million shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine had been administered, roughly a third of the first shipment sent last week. More than 9.5 million doses of the vaccine, including Moderna, have now been shipped to the states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While hospitals have started distributing Moderna’s vaccine, the CDC has yet to release this data and there may be a delay in notification of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine injections.

The slow pace has barely picked up since the first week when 614,000 shots were fired while nearly 2.9 million were dispatched.

Hospitals said the first COVID-19 vaccinations started slowly last Monday as they moved towards preparing previously frozen vaccines for use, finding employees to run vaccination clinics and ensuring good social distancing before and after vaccination. Some said they only fired about 100 shots on the first day.

They were grappling with an outbreak of COVID-19, as cases in the United States exceeded 18 million with 323,000 deaths. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)

The Trump administration has pledged to vaccinate 20 million by the end of the year while providing little funding to meet the target.

That’s nine days to distribute nearly 19 million vaccines or more than 2 million people vaccinated per day, including Christmas Day.

Nearly 5.9 million doses of Moderna Inc’s vaccine are expected to be released this week and an additional 2 million doses from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech.

“The commitment we can make is to make the vaccine doses available,” Operation Warp Speed ​​chief US adviser Dr Moncef Slaoui said during a press call on Wednesday. He noted that the rate of people being shot in the arm is “slower than we thought.”

Two more vaccines could be approved in February by Johnson & Johnson Inc and AstraZeneca Plc.

The government’s target is 100 million Pfizer and Moderna gunshots by March 1.

General Gustave Perna of Operation Warp Speed, who is leading the vaccine distribution effort, said on Monday that CDC data reflected a backlog in reporting and that the number of vaccinations would catch up over time.

The CDC said its data may also reflect a mismatch between vaccine dosage and state notification. Most nursing home vaccinations only started in droves this week, and CDC data does not specify how many doses from the First Shipment were held by states for this group.

EXTENDED THIN STAFF

Margaret Mary Health, a 25-bed rural hospital in Indiana, built a drive-thru vaccination clinic at a local fire station and one at a local recreation center to vaccinate healthcare workers in surrounding counties, according to General Manager Tim Putnam.

Putnam, who controlled traffic at the clinic’s drive-thru, said he used around 400 of the 1,100 doses received.

“We are asking for volunteers from our staff, volunteers from the local community college to step in and start this process from scratch,” he said.

Some of the largest US hospitals have vaccinated more than 1,000 people per day, after testing vaccine distribution and deployment.

Vermont, Delaware and Idaho were among states that confirmed their states only gave thousands of doses – a fraction of what they had – in the first week.

Jason Schwartz, assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health, called the initial tally “disheartening” and said that “the challenges of releasing vaccines as quickly as we are able to manufacture them will not will only increase. ”

Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine could speed up deployment because it requires a conventional refrigerator and doesn’t have any specialized procedures to thaw and administer, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association for Immunization Managers business group. AstraZeneca two-dose vaccine can also be stored in the refrigerator.

“When it’s refrigerator stable and a single dose diet, it can’t be easier than that,” Hannan said.

HOSPITALS START SLOWLY BUT SPEED UP

Dr Saul Weingart, the chief medical officer at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said the hospital administered about 750 of the 3,000 available on Friday. It started with 100 shots a day and worked up to around 450, he said.

He said experts at the hospital had modeled that administering Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine would take 10 minutes, about two to three times longer than a flu shot, due to the procedures required, because the vaccine is stored in a freezer. Patients should socially distance themselves before and after receiving the vaccine and be monitored for allergic reactions.

The United States gives 170 million flu shots every year in a matter of months, but for the COVID-19 pandemic, the US needs to give about three times that number of vaccines – the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are two doses – to reach most Americans in July. At its current rate, the United States appears to have the capacity to administer less than a third of the shots dispatched in any given week, underscoring the gap.

A spokesman for the Houston Methodist, a hospital in Houston, Texas, said it gave the vaccine to 8,300 employees on Monday with about 7,000 doses remaining from the first shipment.

The University of Southern California’s Keck Medicine School of Medicine has vaccinated more than 3,000 employees and said it would take six weeks for everyone, like their flu shot schedule.

States and health departments need federal funds to hire staff, from data center workers to track immunizations to field question call center workers, said Adriane Casalotti, head of government and Public Affairs of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The current U.S. congressional coronavirus aid program is setting aside more than $ 8 billion for vaccine distribution, but is being delayed.

“You can’t hire someone in December and train them if you don’t know you can pay them in January,” Casalotti said.