The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed blamed a variety of factors, including snowstorms, holidays, storage challenges and general inexperience for the slower-than-expected distribution of Covid-19 vaccines this month.
“There is a learning curve,” said Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
“There were a number of days that were ‘lost’ because of holidays or snowstorms,” he said.
On Wednesday, about 2.6 million people – most of them front-line healthcare professionals and some nursing home residents – received their first injections of the 14 million doses that were administered this month, according to the administration. A review by NBC News of earlier data on Tuesday found that, at the current rate, it would take nearly 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to keep the pandemic in check.
In September, the government promised that 100 million doses would be sent by the end of the year. This month, Slaoui cut the projection to 20 million.
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Slaoui and Army General Gustave Perna, chief of operations for Operation Warp Speed, said on Wednesday’s call that they were not satisfied with the numbers they have seen so far of vaccines administered.
“We agree that this number is less than we expected,” said Slaoui.
But, they said, they expected the pace of patients receiving the vaccines to increase.
“The absorption of the vaccine starts a little slow, but then increases exponentially and very quickly,” said Perna. “It’s been 12 days, two holidays, three big snowstorms.”
“Every day, everyone improves and I believe that acceptance will increase significantly as we move forward,” he added. He said he expected an improvement in vaccine administration in mid-January.
Authorities said the federal government and vaccine manufacturers had delivered 14 million doses to the states. In a separate conference call on Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 2.6 million people had received vaccines so far, including people in nursing homes and social care facilities.
Although the federal government helped to coordinate the distribution of vaccine doses from manufacturers to the states, the coordination of vaccine administration was left to the states, many of which lack the money, staff and other resources to schedule and administer doses in a timely manner. uniform .
Slaoui, the former head of the vaccine division at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, said the government would like more help if people wanted to offer it.
“Come to the table, roll up your sleeves and help us with specific ideas,” he said. “We appreciate any contribution, but it needs to be specific and actionable.”
They said the government has so far enrolled 70,000 health care providers, including doctors’ offices, hospitals and pharmacies, as eligible to administer the vaccine. “As vaccines become available at pharmacies, it will be easier” for people to get them, said Slaoui.
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Perna said another reason for the low number of vaccines administered was that the authorities reserved some for CVS and Walgreens to use in long-term care facilities. “This contributes to part of the delay and can be a significant number – a few hundred million, to be sure,” he said.
Slaoui said the slow pace of vaccines will not affect the government’s timetable for broad public access to vaccines until April.
“From the point of view of availability, there is no problem,” he said of the manufacturing process.