A growing number of COVID-19 vaccination sites in the United States are canceling thousands of appointments because of a vaccine shortage in an implementation so confusing that even the new director of the CDC admitted she does not know exactly how many vaccines are in progress.
States waited to discover their last weekly allocation of vaccine from the federal government on Tuesday amid complaints from governors and senior health officials about inadequate supplies and the need for earlier and more reliable estimates of how much is on the way so that can plan accordingly.
President Joe Biden suggested Monday that he hopes the country could soon increase to 1.5 million doses a day. His government also promised more openness and said it would hold press conferences three times a week on the outbreak that killed more than 420,000 Americans.
Amid growing frustration, the Biden White House scheduled its first virus-related call with the country’s governors on Tuesday. The president planned to give an update on efforts to strengthen the supply of vaccines and put more injections in the arms of Americans more quickly, said press secretary Jen Psaki.
The configuration inherited from the Trump administration was marked by communication failures and unexplained bottlenecks, with shortages reported in some places, even when vaccine doses remain on the shelves.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Biden’s new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was perplexed over the weekend when trying to describe current supplies.
“I can’t say how much vaccine we have,” she told Fox News Sunday, describing the problem as a challenge left by the Trump administration. “And if I can’t tell you, then I can’t tell the governors, and I can’t tell the state health officials. If they don’t know how much vaccine they are getting, not just this week, but the next week and the week after, they can’t plan. “
On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis he said the state is “at the mercy of what the federal government sends us” and cannot meet the growing demand from residents.
West Virginia officials, who have one of the best vaccine administration rates, said they had less than 11,000 first doses available even after this week’s shipment.
“I’m screaming” for more, said Republican Governor Jim Justice.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he does not expect the state’s allocation to increase in the coming weeks, which will limit progress in vaccinating those who are now eligible, including people over 65 and the first respondents. Rhode Island officials said last week that they cannot expand eligibility for people over 65 in current allocations, despite complaints from senior advocates.
The weekly allocation cycle for the first doses starts on Monday nights, when federal authorities review manufacturers’ data on vaccine availability to determine how much each state may have. Allocations are based on the population of people aged 18 and over in each jurisdiction.
States are notified on Tuesday of their allocations through a computer network called Tiberius and other channels, after which they can specify where they want the doses to be sent. Deliveries begin the following Monday.
A similar but separate process for ordering second doses, which should be administered three to four weeks after the first, begins each week on Sunday night.
On Tuesday morning, the CDC reported that just over half of the 41 million doses distributed to states were placed in people’s arms. This is far less than the hundreds of millions of doses that experts say will need to be administered to obtain collective immunity and beat the outbreak.
The United States is in fifth place in the world in number of doses administered in relation to the country’s population, behind Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Bahrain, according to the University of Oxford.
The reason why more injections available in the United States have not been dispensed with is not entirely clear. But many vaccination sites apparently keep large quantities of vaccine in reserve to ensure that people who have already given the first vaccine receive the second vaccine on time.
In addition, some state officials have complained about the lag between when they report their vaccination numbers to the government and when the data are published on the CDC website.
In the New Orleans area, Ochsner Health said on Monday that inadequate delivery forced the cancellation of 21,400 consultations for the first dose last week, but that consultations for the second dose were not affected.
Inova Health System, the largest health care provider in the suburbs of Washington, DC, Virginia, said it is canceling all appointments for the first dose at its mass vaccination clinics as of Thursday because of inadequate supplies. Appointments for the second dose will be fulfilled.
In North Carolina, Cone Health, based in Greensboro, has announced that it is canceling first dose appointments for 10,000 people and transferring them to a waiting list due to supply problems.
Jesse Williams, 81, of Reidsville, North Carolina, said his Thursday appointment with Cone Health was crossed out and that he is waiting to know when it will be rescheduled. The former volunteer firefighter hoped that the vaccine would enable him to go back to church, play golf and see friends.
“It’s just a frustration that we expected to have our injections and be a little more resilient to COVID-19,” he said.
The vaccine’s launch in all 27 European Union countries also faced obstacles and was also criticized as too slow. Pfizer is delaying deliveries while upgrading its plant in Belgium to increase capacity. And AstraZeneca has announced that its initial shipment will be less than expected.
The EU, with 450 million citizens, requires pharmaceutical companies to meet their commitments on time.
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Associated Press writers in the United States contributed to this report.
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Find full AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic