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Federal authorities promised earlier this week to stop storing second doses of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines and instead use them to give more people their first injections.
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That statement prompted many states to open up the distribution of vaccines to a wider range of the public this week.
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But a new Washington Post report says the government has not withheld any vaccines for the second doses, and they have already been sent.
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As a result, many states will not receive extra vaccines on their next shipments to meet increased demand.
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America’s vaccine cabinets are empty.
Federal officials – who promised on Tuesday that they would start releasing more doses of COVID-19 vaccines to states – really have no surplus to distribute, according to a new bombshell report by the Washington Post.
The government said it had previously stocked more than 50% of the vaccine stock, saving sufficient second doses of Pfizer and Moderna injections of COVID-19 to ensure that everyone who received an injection could get their second dose on time, no matter what. . (Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are given in two doses, given three or four weeks apart.)
But in fact, the Trump administration was already “taking second shots directly from the manufacturing line,” according to the Post report.
Read More: How pharmaceutical giant Pfizer teamed up with a little-known biotechnology company to develop the first authorized coronavirus vaccine in record time
This instant strategy – of sending vaccine doses as quickly as they were being manufactured – started in December for the Pfizer vaccine, and the same has been true for Moderna’s vaccines since last weekend, according to the Post.
A failed stock
After President-elect Biden promised last Friday that his government would begin releasing all available vaccine doses when he takes office next week, the Trump administration also announced that it was following the same plan.
The federal government also seemed to suggest that by releasing more doses in this way, the country would be able to vaccinate more people. United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar recommended on Tuesday that all states should expand their vaccine delivery parameters to include everyone aged 65 and over, as well as younger people with comorbidities.
“We have been very successful with quality and predictable manufacturing and almost perfect distribution of the vaccine,” Azar told ABC on Tuesday. “We were withholding second doses as a safety stock. We now believe that our manufacture is predictable enough to ensure that second doses are available to people in production in progress, so everything is now available.”
It is something that many public health experts have suggested that has been a good idea for some time.
“We are in a pandemic, where things are horrible,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of public health at Brown University, told Insider. “We can make some protections that say that we must withhold some doses, but assume that our production will not collapse completely for months and months.”
But states are already complaining that they don’t have enough vaccines and, without more vaccines, it is unclear how their distribution can expand.
States, begging for more vaccines, have been informed that the stock is empty
At least nine state governors, desperate to get more shots into the arms of their citizens, also sent a letter to Washington last week, saying “our states and residents need more vaccines now”.
“According to publicly released information, the federal government currently has more than 50% of vaccines produced currently held by the government for unknown reasons,” the letter said, citing media reports.
But state and federal officials who have actually been told about vaccine dose distribution plans now tell the Washington Post that there is no such surplus and that most vaccine allocations to states next week will be stable.
A notable exception is Connecticut, a state that has vaccinated its citizens in one of the fastest clips in the country so far. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont tweeted Thursday that his state will receive 50,000 extra doses next week, “as a reward for being among the fastest states” to vaccinate.
Almost 30 million vaccines distributed, but less than 10 million were in arms
Operation Warp Speed said on Thursday that nearly 30 million doses of vaccines have been distributed to states so far. But boxed injections are not equivalent to gun vaccines.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than 10 million adult Americans have started receiving their vaccines since vaccinations began in mid-December.
“It’s a crisis,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine who is also developing a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine, to Insider.
“Our only hope now – given how fast this virus is accelerating and causing 4,000 deaths a day – is that we need to vaccinate the American people at a rate of 1 to 2 million a day every day from now until the end of August, and we’re not even close to that. “
The US Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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