The week
Experts express concern over Biden’s plan to release almost all available vaccine doses
President-elect Joe Biden plans to release almost all available doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines when he takes office later this month, instead of withholding millions of second doses, his transition team said on Friday. The decision aims to “ensure that the Americans who need it most receive it as quickly as possible”. The Trump administration has insisted that it is necessary to retain second doses, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar expressing concern on Friday that Biden’s plan could backfire if there were any manufacturing setbacks. Outside the White House, Dr. Leana Wen of George Washington University was also apprehensive, noting that there is “an ethical consideration”, since those who volunteered for the starting dose were reasonably hoping to receive the second one at adequate amount of time. Biden does not intend to delay the second injection for these patients and, instead, is counting on an increase in production to keep pace. But, says Wen, in addition to there being no guarantee of a smooth manufacturing process, much of the slowdown occurred between dispensing and injection, so until this stage improves, the risk of delay remains.> First, the bottleneck is not it is the supply, but the “last mile” between taking the vaccine to distribution sites and injecting it into people’s arms. Speeding up this process should be the focus, or else the vaccines will be in different freezers. >> (2/6) >> – Leana Wen, MD (@DrLeanaWen) January 9, 2021 Juliette Kayyem of Harvard University, however, is more on board with the plan. She believes there is unlikely to be a supply problem and is encouraged by recent increases in actual vaccinations. > Quick thoughts: we are unlikely to have a supply problem by February with Biden’s announcement (he is not changing FDA standards, just the timing of the first vaccine delivery due to the supply chain dependence according to the good idea @ScottGottliebMD) and other vaccines (johnson and johnson) 2 / >> – Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 9, 2021More stories from theweek.com 7 biting cartoons about Trump’s riot on Capitol Hill There will be no heir to Trump The legislature will react ?