U.S. vaccination campaign gathers momentum as White House ramps up shipments

(Reuters) – The U.S. government has hit the accelerator on its COVID-19 vaccine shipments after a month of largely stagnant weekly deliveries, giving states the doses they say they need to complete immunization of priority groups and open vaccines to all the adults coming weeks.

The biggest increase in supply came from Johnson & Johnson. Shipments of the single-dose vaccine had been slow to increase since its approval in late February, with the company awaiting regulatory approval from a key plant in the United States.

Pfizer Inc has also increased production of its vaccine, doubling batch size and shortening production time. Moderna said Monday it has shipped 100 million doses of its vaccine to the United States.

Officials in more than half a dozen states, including Vermont, Idaho and New Jersey, told Reuters that increased vaccine shipments would allow them to speed up efforts to vaccinate the elderly and frontline workers and, in some cases, opening vaccines to all adult residents earlier than expected. expected.

“The increasing allocation of vaccines by the Biden administration allows us to speed up our immunization schedule,” said Ben Truman, spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Public Health.

Vermont has now decided to offer vaccines to all adults on April 16, a month ahead of schedule, he said.

The U.S. government increased its weekly COVID-19 dose allocations by more than 20% to 27 million last week. This includes 4 million doses of J&J vaccine, up from just a few hundred thousand in previous weeks.

The White House expects this to increase even more over the next week, with plans to deliver around 11 million J&J snapshots. If shipments of Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna Inc vaccines remain constant, this is expected to bring the total number of weekly vaccines to over 34 million.

And Pfizer’s shipments to the states have increased, climbing about 25% last week from the previous week and about 45% since the start of the month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC ) the United States.

To date, the US government has delivered 88 million Moderna snapshots to locations in the United States. Moderna plans to ship an additional 100 million doses by the end of May and the same amount again by the end of July by delivering 40 to 50 million doses per month.

The United States hovered at a seven-day average of about 2.5 million shots per day for most of the second half of March, as the federal government struggled to overcome bottlenecks. supply bottleneck.

Vermont expects increased vaccine shipments to allow it to speed up vaccinations for priority groups such as teachers and people with chronic health conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19, Truman said.

SHOTS FOR ALL

The higher allowances of J&J vaccines, which can be kept in a standard refrigerator and immunize people with just one shot, could be particularly useful for getting vaccines to hard-to-reach and underserved groups, officials told Reuters. New Jersey and Vermont.

Indiana is using its J&J shooting remit to set up a mass vaccination center at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the first half of April, a spokeswoman said. Ohio plans to use mobile vaccination clinics to get J&J vaccinated to those hardest to reach.

Idaho residents are actively researching J & J’s single-dose vaccine rather than two-dose Pfizer or Moderna alternatives, said Zachary Clark, spokesperson for the Idaho public health agency, despite data suggesting that J & J’s vaccine is somewhat less effective in preventing disease. He added that Idaho’s allocation of J&J vaccines is still much lower than that of other vaccines.

About half of U.S. states plan to start offering vaccines to all residents over 16 in April, ahead of the Biden administration’s target date of May 1 for widespread vaccine availability.

However, Wisconsin officials said they were waiting to ensure the federal government can support the increased shipments before committing to a faster deployment.

“We would like to see more vaccines and more currently eligible people vaccinated before moving on to the general population,” Jennifer Miller, spokesperson for the Wisconsin public health agency, said in an email.

The companies making the three licensed COVID-19 vaccines have pledged to provide the U.S. government with 240 million doses by Wednesday.