Holy Name Medical Center CEO Michael Maron told CNBC on Tuesday that Covid’s vaccination efforts at his New Jersey hospital were hampered by a consistent problem: inconsistent availability.
“The biggest challenge we now face is the supply of the vaccine. We just can’t get it, and we can’t get it in any reliable way. It’s very difficult, ”said Maron in“ Power Lunch ”.
“One week we will have Pfizer, next week we will have Moderna,” he added, referring to the manufacturers of the two vaccines that have received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. “We never know for sure how much of this is coming, whether there are a thousand doses … or two thousand or more.”
So far, Maron said the Holy Name Medical Center – located in Teaneck, near New York City – has administered about 5,000 doses of vaccine. However, Maron said the hospital has the capacity to administer 3,000 doses per day, in part due to a partnership it has established with Teaneck to create a vaccination site at a community center.
On Monday, 570 residents received the vaccine on site, according to a post on Teaneck’s official website. But due to the “lack of available vaccine,” wrote county manager Dean Kazinci, the site was closed on Tuesday – illustrating the supply challenges Maron spoke of.
“Holy Name Medical Center is awaiting delivery of additional vaccine trays, which are expected to arrive mid-week. We will release additional information when it becomes available,” wrote Kazinci.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Holy Name website also informs visitors that the hospital is not scheduling Covid vaccination appointments “at the moment” due to availability restrictions.
The distribution of Covid vaccines in the United States took place at a slower pace than authorities expected. About 12.3 million doses have been administered until Friday, according to the latest available data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have already been 31.2 million doses distributed.
President-elect Joe Biden, who will take office on Wednesday, has promised to speed up the launch of the vaccine with the promise to administer 100 million doses in 100 days. On Sunday, Biden’s choice to run the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said he believed the United States would have an adequate supply of vaccines to meet the target.
“It will be a heavy lift, but we have enough to do that,” said Walensky on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program.
Covid Hospitalizations
Although Covid vaccinations are essential to limit the impact of the disease, Maron warned that the coronavirus outbreak in the United States is a current threat. On Tuesday, Covid’s death toll in the country surpassed 400,000, just over a month after registering 300,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Maron said Covid’s hospitalizations at Holy Name Medical Center are not at the levels seen at the beginning of the pandemic, as in March and April. The hospital also offers better treatments for patients now, he said. However, he said that a worrying aspect is the age of patients hospitalized with the disease.
“It’s not who you would think,” said Maron. “They are mainly people between 45 and 65 years old, so these are not the frail elderly people that everyone was talking about. These are the ones in the fans, that worries us a little ”.
He said it was unclear what was causing hospitalizations among younger US residents. “For us here in the industry, it’s a reminder that this is still a very, very serious and deadly virus. We should not take it lightly ”.