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Figures for vaccine distribution in the country have baffled observers for weeks, with states saying they need more vaccines as data indicates they still have many doses on hand.
President Biden’s health officials sought to explain themselves on Wednesday, at least in part.
Speaking at a press conference, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said not all vaccines shipped to states were available to “be inserted into the arms. people”.
Jeff Zients, Covid-19 response coordinator at the White House, took this explanation a step further.
“Part of what the states have right now is inventory to do the very, very important second shot,” Zients said. “I think it’s important that when you look at state inventories that you recognize that some of that inventory is being held for the second very important shot.”
The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines currently available for emergency use in the United States require two doses. A federal dashboard tracks the national distribution of these vaccines. The data shows how many doses of the vaccine were given to each state, but it does not differentiate between the first and second dose.
Take Florida, where federal data on Wednesday showed that about 3.1 million doses had been delivered and about 1.6 million had been administered. This represents about 50% of the doses intended for weapons.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki used similar numbers to suggest Florida had plenty of vaccines on Monday, after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state was not receiving not enough federal government supply and needed more.
“I will note, because we’re the data first here, the facts first, that they only distributed about 50% of the vaccines they received in Florida,” Psaki said. “So clearly they have a good deal of the vaccine.”
DeSantis rebuffed the White House comments on Wednesday, explaining that federal data did not account for vaccines intended for second doses.
“When the person in the White House says Florida has all of these doses, they’re second doses,” DeSantis said.
Other states are also claiming that part of their vaccine inventory is for the second injection.
“When a first dose comes in, you can just go ahead and give it to someone. When a second dose comes in, it must be 21 days later for Pfizer or 28 days later for Moderna,” Kristen Ehresmann, the director of Minnesota’s Infectious Diseases Division of Epidemiology, Prevention and Control, said in an email to CNN. “So yeah, we get this vaccine and then give it at the proper interval and it may seem like we’re ‘sitting on doses’ when we’re not.”
In New York City, Gov. Andrew Cuomo began expressing the state’s vaccine distribution figures in terms of first and second doses, announcing on Wednesday that 96% of the state’s first allocated doses have been delivered, at the exclusion from the federal vaccination program of long-term care facilities with CVS and Walgreens.
On Tuesday, Cuomo said his condition was “essentially running out of vaccine,” but on the same day, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had also complained about running out of vaccines, said the city had doses intended for the second injections in its inventory. .
“I have a hundred thousand second doses,” de Blasio told MSNBC.
De Blasio went on to say that the doses “lay on a shelf” and “could not be used for weeks”. He said President Biden should order governments across the country to take second doses from their inventory and use them now for the first doses.
“Even a first dose gives people about 50% protection,” he says.
Cuomo said on Tuesday that the second doses are not being distributed as the first doses due to uncertainty over how quickly additional doses of the vaccine can be made.
“The fear is that until you really know what the production schedule is, if you start using the second dose as the first dose you must have a drastically increased supply or you are going to leave people without a second dose at the time. of their appointment is due, ”Cuomo said.
It is not known how many states have a second dose inventory, or how many states may handle the distribution of second doses differently. The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiries for details.
In Maryland, the state does not keep any reserve doses in its warehouses other than doses to be administered that week, according to Charles Gischlar of the state’s health department. Gischalar says Maryland has asked the federal government to automatically distribute second doses to providers who received the first doses.
Elizabeth Hartfield of CNN contributed to this story.
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