Washington State Department of Health COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Plan



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Last week I heard a report on the Covid-19 vaccine. I listened with enthusiasm as I was told how long the vaccine might be available. According to the presenter, once vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are cleared, Americans could start receiving vaccines within 24 to 48 hours.

YES!!!

First, front-line healthcare workers and those most at risk of seriously ill, like older Americans with pre-existing health conditions, and I was like, “Sure. It makes sense. “

Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

Then I heard that vaccines would be more widely available to young and healthy members of the general public in the spring of 2021….

NOOOOOOOO!

I instantly became Private Benjamin. Guess I’m not that young, but for those of you who remember, there was a scene in the movie where spoiled young ingenuous Goldie Hawn (who isn’t young either) joins army and, during a grueling exercise, breaks down and whines about the things she wants to do.

I want to go to lunch. I want to go back to NORMAL!

Me too, Judy Benjamin, me too.

Do not mistake yourself; I want everyone who should get the vaccine first to get it first. I just want it too! So, I went for a little more information on how this will all work when the time comes.

I have found that the Washington State Department of Health continues to make progress in its efforts to plan the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Vaccine authorizations and approvals

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received its first emergency use authorization (EUA) application from a manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines on November 20. This is encouraging news about the potential of vaccines to be used as a prevention tool to control the pandemic. . An EUA allows the FDA to make a product available during a declared state of emergency before it has a full license.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biologics Advisory Committee will meet on December 10 to consider EUA’s application. Vaccine safety is of the utmost importance to communities in Washington. If the EUA is approved, the vaccine will then be approved by the Western States Scientific Safety Review Working Group.

This working group will provide another layer of scrutiny and expertise to this process and is expected to take approximately 1 to 2 days. This will be done while the vaccine is still being processed and shipped, so it should not delay making the vaccine available to Washington residents.

First vaccine arrival

The DOH hopes to have a vaccine to administer by mid-December. The federal government gave them an estimate of 62,400 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for their initial allocation. The government has also told the state that we should receive a total of about 200,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine by the end of December. Regular weekly shipments are expected to begin in January.

There is no estimate for the Moderna vaccine; they expect to know more once the company submits its emergency use authorization application.

The first people eligible to receive vaccines are high-risk workers in health care settings. This is called phase 1A. The state will share more information on vaccine phases in the coming weeks.

The vaccine candidate manufactured by Pfizer should be stored at ultra-cold temperatures. Fortunately, sites that do not have ultra-cold storage capacity can still store this vaccine in the special thermal charger that the vaccine arrives in. This allows additional sites to receive the vaccine as long as they can immunize at least 975 people in 20 days. They are also working on a policy that will allow hospitals that do not plan to vaccinate 975 people to transfer additional vaccines to other registered facilities. This will reduce vaccine wastage.

Supplier registration

Providers who have fully enrolled in the COVID-19 vaccination program by December 6 will be eligible to receive a portion of the first shipment. As of November 25, 54 vendors were fully enrolled, and many more were either partially completed or pending approval. They are encouraging clinics, pharmacies and hospitals to register for the program soon to meet the deadline. They can register at www.COVIDVaccineWA.org.

The DOH will coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ship vaccines directly to registered providers once the vaccine becomes available. The providers will then be responsible for the storage and administration of the vaccine. They regularly meet with registered and interested vendors to provide updates and technical support. They will know in early December which facilities will receive the vaccine first.

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

The potential good news is that other vaccine candidates could also get emergency clearance. This would speed up the process considerably and make the vaccine more widely available to the public. So fingers crossed that soon we can all go out for lunch and be NORMAL again soon.



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