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Last month, as nurses in New Jersey administered the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli deflated some of the optimism of the moment by warning that vaccinations would be slow.
“We expect demand for the vaccine to exceed supply,” Persichilli said in late December.
That turned out to be a bit of an understatement.
So far, New Jersey has given at least the first dose of the vaccine to just 3.1% of people in the state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday night. That’s slightly below the national average of 3.2% and below about half of all states.
Public health experts say the narrow, phased approach to vaccination in New Jersey has unnecessarily slowed the rollout.
“The phases don’t work; they’re extremely problematic, ”said Perry Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. “We have to have phases, but we want porous phases.”
Halkitis compared the phased approach to vaccines in the state to a sinking ship where one lifeboat needs to be filled before people can begin to fill the next. “It’s going to end in death,” he said.
But even though they criticize the state’s immunization plan, health experts agree that a more methodical approach is better than what’s been done in other states, like Florida, which has done the job. national news over the past week as a strategy more open to vaccinations led to long lines, Eventbrite planning and reports of people out of state being shot.
Florida’s strategy was to open vaccinations to its large population of people over the age of 65 – a group of over 4 million, or about half of the entire population of New Jersey – even though the state only had a tiny fraction of the vaccines available to these people. . As might be expected, confusion ensued.
“The deployment to Florida bothers me, in what I see the idea of seniors lining up and waiting all night is overwhelming for many reasons,” said Preeti Malani, director of health at the University. from Michigan. “No one should be doing this.”
Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, told the Orlando Sentinel that the federal government’s lack of supplies and information is to blame for the state’s immunization problems, not a planning or deployment at the state level.
But even with all of Florida’s problems getting gunshots, the state has still administered vaccines to 3.6% of its population, a larger proportion than New Jersey’s.
“I can see the value of vaccinating as many people as quickly as possible, even if they don’t fall into the initially recommended categories 1A, 1B, 1C,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital. of Philadelphia and member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee.
But a more effective vaccine rollout lies somewhere between New Jersey and Florida, experts say.
“I believe that somewhere between a very conservative approach and a vaccine that is free for all, there is probably the right approach,” said Stephanie Silvera, epidemiologist at Montclair State University. “I think New Jersey has so far taken an overly cautious and conservative approach and that has resulted in a very slow deployment that we are only starting to see accelerate.
Silvera added that state officials need to increase vaccination hours and train more people to administer vaccines, so that it is as easy as possible for people to get vaccinated.
The slower-than-expected pace of vaccinations, both in New Jersey and across the country, has added to tensions as the coronavirus conflagration continues to spread across the United States, steadily setting daily death records. Models now predict that in a few months more than 500,000 people will have been killed by COVID-19 in this country.
New Jersey health officials reported 5,490 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 67 additional deaths on Friday. The state has now lost 20,320 residents to the COVID-19 outbreak – 18,229 confirmed deaths and 2,091 considered probable. New Jersey has already announced 1,231 confirmed deaths this month, following 1,890 in December.
Governor Phil Murphy on Wednesday announced the first major expansion of the state’s immunization program, opening vaccines to people 65 years of age and older and to people with conditions that put them at increased risk of health complications related to COVID-19. The decision was based on changing federal guidelines and the hope that more doses will be available soon.
“It’s sort of, if not largely, based on the anticipation – not the guarantee, but the anticipation – of increased vaccine deliveries, as the federal government will no longer withhold doses, we are confident. in taking those steps, ”Murphy said Wednesday. “We have put in place the infrastructure we need to do this job and are now ready to start scaling up our immunization efforts exponentially.”
This infrastructure includes 259 planned vaccination sites, six of which are mega sites. The state has a total of 165 sites open Wednesday, Murphy said.
More than a million people have already signed up to be vaccinated and the state hopes to administer vaccines to 70% of its adult population, or about 4.7 million people, by May. People are encouraged to register on the state’s website and then make an appointment at one of the vaccination sites.
Halkitis said the immunization expansion announced this week will help New Jersey, but added he would like to see it expanded further.
“I think we’ll be better with time,” Halkitis said. “I think you need the rules otherwise it becomes a free game for everyone. 65 and immunocompromised (people) is a step in the right direction, but I would add teachers and other frontline workers.
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Payton Guion can be reached at [email protected].
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