TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) – Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to get a life-saving COVID-19 vaccine that the 69-year-old piano teacher stood in line overnight in a parking lot with hundreds of other seniors.
She wouldn’t do that again.
Hadler said he waited 14 hours and that a fight almost broke out before dawn on Tuesday, when people lined up outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where employees were offering first-order shots to those 65 or Older.
“I’m afraid the event was a super propagator,” she said. “I was petrified.”
The race to vaccinate millions of Americans is starting to be slower and more confusing than public health officials and leaders of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed expected.
Overworked and underfunded state public health departments are struggling to fix vaccine administration plans. Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, leading to long lines, confusion, frustration and congestion on telephone lines. A series of logistical concerns has complicated the process of trying to repel the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is asking for patience, noting that vaccine supply is limited.
“It may not be today for everyone, it may not be next week. But in the coming weeks, as long as we continue to receive the supply, you will have the opportunity to obtain it, ”he said on Wednesday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a health policy researcher and dean at Brown University School of Public Health, said the main problem is that states are not receiving adequate financial or technical support from the federal government. Jha said the Trump administration, primarily the Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered states to fail.
“There is still a lot that states need to do,” he said, “but you need a much more active role for the federal government than what they are willing to do. In large part, they told the states, ‘This is your responsibility. Understand.'”
The delays in the release of vaccination numbers explain in part why many states are not meeting their year-end goals, but officials blame logistical and financial obstacles for the slow pace.
Many states cannot afford to hire staff, pay overtime or reach the public. The equipment needed to keep vaccines cool makes distribution difficult. In addition, providers need to monitor vaccinations so that they have enough to dispense with the second necessary doses 21 days after the first.
Dr. James McCarthy, chief medical officer at Memorial Hermann in Houston, said the hospital system has administered about half of the nearly 30,000 doses it has received since December 15.
The system had to create a plan from scratch. Among other things, administrators had to ensure that everyone in the vaccination areas could socially distance themselves, and they had to establish a 15-minute observation period for each patient so that recipients could be watched for any side effects.
“We can’t just distribute them like candy,” said McCarthy.
Pasadena, Calif., Is vaccinating its firefighters in groups of 50 after the end of two-day shifts, so that they can recover during the four days off. “We don’t want most of our workforce – if they experience side effects – to leave at the same time,” said city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian.
In South Carolina, state lawmakers are questioning why the state administered only 35,158 of the 112,125 doses of Pfizer it received until Wednesday. State Sen. Marlon Kimpson said officials have told him that some frontline health workers are refusing to be vaccinated, while others are on vacation.
Lin Humphrey, a university professor whose 81-year-old mother lives with him in a skyscraper in Miami, said he took about 80 calls to get someone on the phone at a Miami Beach hospital that started vaccinating the elderly last week.
“It reminded me of the ’80s, when you had to call a radio station to be the tenth call to get concert tickets,” said Humphrey. “When I finally got it, I cried on the phone with the woman.”
In recent weeks, the Trump administration’s health officials have talked about the goal of sending enough vaccine by the end of the month to inoculate 20 million Americans. But it is not clear whether the United States will reach that mark.
Army General Gustave Perna, chief of operations for Operation Warp Speed, said on Wednesday that 14 million doses had been shipped across the country so far. Screening by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that as of Wednesday, nearly 2.8 million injections had been administered.
Officials said there was a delay in the dissemination of vaccinations, but they are still happening more slowly than expected. Perna predicted that the pace would increase next week.
“We agree that this number is less than we expected,” said Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientist at Warp Speed.
On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden said the Trump administration is “lagging behind” and promised to pick up the pace as soon as he takes office on January 20. In early December, Biden promised to distribute 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his administration.
Jha said Biden’s goal is ambitious, but achievable.
“It won’t be easy if what they pick up on January 20 is an infrastructure that is not ready to run on the first day,” he said.
In Tennessee, health officials hoped to reach the goal of dispensing 200,000 doses by the end of the year, but delays in shipments could prevent this from happening. Health officials said the state received 20,300 doses on Tuesday, which were due to arrive last week.
“There is nothing we could have done about it,” said Dr. Lisa Piercey, Tennessee’s health commissioner.
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Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press reporters John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia; Marion Renault in Rochester, Minnesota; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Desiree Mathurin in Atlanta; and Michelle Liu in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.