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By Peter Szekely
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Scattered COVID-19 vaccine shortages persisted on Saturday under pressure from growing demand, as previously vaccinated Americans returned for their required second vaccines and millions of newly eligible people rushed to get their first.
Supply shortages, coming as the U.S. vaccination effort enters its second month, has prompted some health systems to suspend appointments for new vaccine applicants and a New York health system to cancel a large number of existing ones.
“As eligibility increases you only increase demand, but we are not able to increase supply,” Northwell Health spokesman Joe Kemp said by phone to Reuters. .
Northwell, New York’s largest healthcare provider, offers appointments only as he receives more vaccines, and only after assigning doses to people scheduled for their second injection, said Kemp.
Although the supply flow has been sporadic, Northwell expects to offer appointments in the coming week, he added.
The two approved vaccines, one from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech and the other from Moderna Inc, require a booster three to four weeks after the first shot to maximize their effectiveness against the coronavirus.
While healthcare workers, residents, and nursing home staff have first priority, vaccine eligibility has since widened, with some states opening it up to healthy people aged 65 and over. and people of all ages with pre-existing conditions.
In addition to New York, signs of vaccine supply strains have appeared in Vermont, Michigan, South Carolina, New Jersey and Oregon.
In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown said vaccinations for seniors and educators would be delayed, while Vermont Governor Phil Scott said the state would focus exclusively on its population of over 75 years due to “unpredictable” federal supplies.
NOT “TOO PROMISING”
“Rather than over-promising a limited supply to a large population that we know we can’t immunize all at once, we believe our strategy will get gunfire faster and more efficiently, with less. loss of life, ”Scott said on Twitter. .
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said last week that less stringent requirements would make 7 million of New York’s 19 million people eligible for vaccinations.
New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital said on Friday it had canceled immunization appointments until Tuesday due to “sudden changes in vaccine supply.”
An official at NYU Langone Health, another health giant, said he had suspended further appointments indefinitely because he had not received any confirmation that he would receive more vaccines.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday that as the city increased its immunization capacity, supplies were still coming in at “a very paltry” 100,000 doses per week, putting it on the right track. way to dry up in the coming week.
De Blasio was among three dozen major city mayors who last week asked the incoming Biden administration to send COVID-19 vaccine shipments directly to them, bypassing state governments.
Jack Sterne, a state spokesperson, blamed the supply problems on the federal government, which he said was cutting vaccine shipments from New York next week from 50,000 doses to 250,000.
“The problem has always been a lack of allocation on Washington’s part, and now that we have expanded the population of eligible people, the federal government continues to fall short of demand,” Sterne said via email.
Added to intergovernmental tension is a feud in which several governors on Friday accused the Trump administration of deceptively committing to distributing millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from a stockpile including the U.S. Health has since recognized that it does not exist.
Since the first vaccine was given in the United States in mid-December, nearly 12.3 million doses have been administered, out of 31.2 million doses distributed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The total includes 1.6 million people who received both doses, the CDC said.
Since the start of the pandemic, 23.4 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, of which 392,153 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
As critically ill patients strain health systems in parts of the country, particularly California, the national hospitalization rate has stabilized over the past two weeks and was 127,095 on Friday.
A model widely cited by the University of Washington predicts that January will be the deadliest month in the pandemic, killing more than 100,000.
But the newly revised model from the university’s Institute for Health Measurement and Evaluation predicts that the monthly toll will drop thereafter to around 11,000 in April, as more people are vaccinated.
“By May 1, some states could be close to collective immunity,” the IHME said.
(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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